Recent poems
Springtime on the Road to Sells
Marigolds, globe mallow, shadow of a hawk, and there goes a runner racing back in time to before the border knew what it divided. History’s in bloom: one country, two countries, no country at all, just the land speaking back to those who live upon it. And saguaros aren’t sure what to believe in, earth or holy orders or the rain. Border guards on duty, watching for the wind to make a run for freedom. A few miles more to where the journey ends at a water tank and a mockingbird so happy the sky pours from its throat as it sings until darkness and then it ascends to drink from the moon when it’s full.
|
Mysteries
About faith they were never wrong, the desert angels. Black clouds above the mission church, an owl at night for each departing soul and prayers for rain ride the thermals every day. An echo, echo marks the closing of the wooden door as footprints leave a dusty trail to midnight. Skunk time, bats are saints flying in sacred space and ringtails find a way to bind their tails around belief. Darkness is the miracle that makes miracles complete: the crops smile again, roadkill comes back to life and inside old adobe walls the organ plays without the hands of a musician. Listen: the notes are walking on their toes uphill on the stony trail to be closer to the stars. |
Radiation Dream
The sky is floating through a room equipped with moving parts that glide without a sound; screens displaying numbers that relate to the position a resting body takes while beams are focused on places eyes can’t reach. The world outside rolls over in its sleep until the power brings the sun to life. An owl passes from the dark to the bough on which she rests to address the mysteries, calling for the agents of destruction to turn to healing and connect the sleeping to the waking world. A hawk’s eye circles over open space. A diagram appears on screen. She fixes her attention on the far below. The ring of parts moves gracefully around and around. Wings angled, she comes down from the sun to Earth, electricity in flight. Blue heron, Laughing falcon, melanoma, alligator, pocket mouse, fruit bat, Harpy eagle, free-tailed bat, Scott’s oriole, lymphoma, Black- tailed rattlesnake, jaguar, mountain lion, and sometimes it seems that cancers are the life force in the universe with the unsuspecting simply in their way. Lie still, the moon is on its circle course. This room is where a slender thread becomes slow lightning. |
On the Job
Late glow on the slopes, desert streaming between the ridgeline and the streets below, Friday afternoon, T-shirts spotted with the stains a day’s work leaves behind and cashiers at the supermarket scanning what the weekend needs. Mourning doves for restfulness, grackles for opportunism and he who all day wheels the carts stacks another line to steer back to the entranceway. So much to be done: bread to bake and orders to compile, restrooms to be cleaned and a country to be run. A painter splashed white is picking up fruit, a man dressed in black casually steps between coffee and the cookie shelves with a sidearm strapped conspicuously at his side. So much to be done: wash the floors, make appointments, secure domestic peace and spray the fruit to keep it fresh. Almost Saturday, but there’s work for the workers to do even when the sunlight looks nervous. No rest for the doctors, mechanics, plumbers and all who believe that even a rudderless ship reaches port in a storm. |
Owlcast
Here’s what we need to know today: the owls are well. It’s mating season and they’re calling close to home. Wings wide beside the streetlamp, sudden glow and plumage pale. There has to be a house fire somewhere for the morning news, has to be a presidential outburst better suited to a prime time sitcom built around dysfunctionality. New moon. Spirit voices. Midnight’s meditation. Morning and a shower of goldfinches out of the sun, first light moving barefoot down the street and yesterday’s headlines fading in the clouds. There’s a war and there’s a cease-fire, a scandal breaking with high crimes in low places. It’s rush hour, the traffic lights are blinking: left-wing, right-wing, and the hawks who roost beside the golf course have a wing for each side but they’re gliding above it all, gracefully intent on catching prey while foreign policy becomes more foreign and executive orders blow coast to coast in a storm. It’s a Madison Avenue country with a Wall Street appetite and news blowing in from all directions. Fire, flood, deportation, give me tariffs or give me a voice from the spirit world, something soft as feathers calling up the day. |
Spiritrunner
Another day begins to sag and suddenly he’s here, looking both ways on the run and happy as sunlight soaking into early summer. The Zuni see him bringing rain, the Maya knew he gave his brightest plumage to the quetzal, to Mexico he brings the good luck America would deny. His footprints in the dust lead away from evil. He’s earthy, sacred, draws latent thoughts from hiding and makes them run, run, run so fast no witches can keep up. Two twenty-eight in the afternoon, he’s a backyard spirit chasing memories away to make space for living now. He’s patient, fast, won’t give up and has a sense of humor to strip unworthy presidents of their hubris. Many mornings he parts the feathers on his back to let the daylight warm him. On the stony front yard beside the ocotillo his presence is divine on humble ground until he runs where even spirits have to hunt. And with a good day’s life accomplished he returns to dream the feathered dream of those who are beautiful and yet uninterested in superficiality. No boasts, no falsehoods, nobody to deceive, just the modest reassurance that come storms he can outrun them and carry shreds of lightning in his beak. |
