carpenters

forgot his lunch
   now I have to give him
       half mine

ladder work

Tree-trimming at Daisy Blue:
  ratcheting the extension ladder
    to thirty feet
Gravel picked up
  from the drive
    raining down
On my breezy skull

library

Forget the books she browses
   I'd rather study
what her sweater houses

dawn, october

Up to Digger Ridge Trail
Turning pedals pre-dawn
Suddenly the branches
Fill with golden fire
And the looping blackbirds
Show off their stunts

breaking up

Rain across Texas today
Didn't help
The sky so close to the mesquite earth
Weeping
Far as the eye can see,
Through towns like Marble Falls
Luckenback
& Fredericksburg.
Rain across the entire LBJ spread,
Muddy ran the Pederales River,
The sun a distant memory.
I tried different tricks
To push her out of my mind,
"Get Present,"
"She's wound too tight,"
"Never would have worked"--
All failing equally.

haiku

through the fence
   the neighbor's vine enters
      flowering

Plato Good-bye

I gave up my quest
For a strong clear mind

I surrender to the waffle
That decides both sides

I relinquish all claims
I go with the flow

I no longer long
For the high alpine lake

My mind's a broad roaming river
Dark with swirling muds & silts

I find myself substantial
As dust-devils crossing county roads:

Abandoned
To the spin & spiral there...

depression

    Now I know what depression is:
a world gone hollow, one's once-ample soul
reduced to tinny echoes of former prospects.
Things, gone.  The half-conscious stream
of possibilities slowed or stopped, night's darkness
nuzzling at the window.  Hollowness.  World of-
inanimate objects.  Just there.  Loss or rapport,
loss of contact.  Lassitude.  What difference does
it make, really?  The clock just ticking, measuring
what?  Drear rudderless lapse of days, movement
of life that signifies nothing.  A tale told
by an idiot?

Edward's Xing

home
by back roads
from North Columbia
in the warm mizzling April dark
Mazda floating
on headlight mists
wet gravel turns & straights-
glimpse of pine-tops
band of moonlight
over the dim pastures-
coasting the river canyons
I caught the ninth inning
a fuzzy faraway Giants game
fade out by the bridge.
Stoppt in the middle
killed the engine
leaned on the rail
lost in the huge starry beauty
of deep Yuba night

home repair

Actually I counted it my great fortune
    to make a living
Prying leaky raingutters
From an old house on 61st Street,
Scrambling on red composite,
    gassho to the men in graves
        who fastened them
In a day just as this:
Bay-clouds overwhelmed in light,
    clap of pigeon wings
        in a grace
Called morning:
Down-crash of twenty-foot sections,
    claw & whine of nails pried
Cussing the black roof-goop
    on calloused hands-

    
   

night ride

Do you recall
   the first joys of bicycling
      in dark of night,

Guided only by faint stripings
   of the old county road,

Streaking through warm summer air
The scent of straw & cinders--

Do you recall
   the animal joy
      of hair-streaming abandon

Plunging down summer hills
   into grassy cool
      frog-and-cricket bottoms,

Gears clicking
   to pump
      the coming rise?

wild asses

     How I miss the smooth nuzzles of the feral burros I befriended down at the tip of Baja, three of them that I made the mistake of feeding.
     Thereafter they'd show at the gate come sundown braying like hungry hyenas.  This didn't exactly endear me to my Zacatito neighbors.

pathos

The sadness of the world
Sticks in my throat like chalk,
I cannot breathe.
Innocence has grown up quickly
And instead of ripening into bright fruit
Adjusts its tender shoulder
To a crucifix of loss.
What began christened with laughter & bubbly
Leans precariously now
On the shoals of an obscure reef,
Beneath a circle of strange birds,
A reckoning gone badly awry