Open Season

The autumn wind ripples across the backs of geese

hunched and chilly in the ploughed field

feathers moving like black and white soft dominos.

There is no technology that tells them to move out

hit the road, beat it or get lost, they just know

to lift off when the ground kisses their feet

with lips subtly colder than the day before. 

My phone goes off, its fake cricket ring tone

startles what seems to be a million feather dusters

beating the air clean of blue.  It’s only the drug

store calling to say my prescription has been renewed.

I smile wryly, can sense a headache coming on.

I turn and slowly walk back down the side-road

to my parked car, avoiding goose dung on the way.

I know there is a good chance that some

will make it past tomorrow’s open season.

Decoys gleam on my back seat in the last slant

of afternoon sun, real enough to pluck.

Imperfect

Clouds rumble in, unexpected house-guests

to an otherwise quiet sky, pushing

through the door of a perfect summer day

to remind us nothing is ever perfect. 

Cloaked in blue grey, under-layed with rain

winds speak in the flap of tarps

rushing oceans of grass

train whistles hanging too long in the wooden air.  

Last year there were promises of return

from faraway places; now faintly evaporated

trails of words catch and crumble

like dry leaves in their annual exodus to grass.

All that is green today will soon be yellow.

We hibernate as deeply as winter bears

while stars unclothe themselves slowly

to a grim, voyeuristic night.

Alone-ku

Alone and drunk
at the top of a hill -
nobody looks like you

Briefly it Enters, Briefly it Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside me. . . . I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . . I am water rushing to the wellhead, filling the pitcher until it spills. . . . I am the patient gardener of the dry and weedy garden. . . . I am the stone step, the latch, and the working hinge. . . . I am the heart contracted by joy. . . the longest hair, white before the rest. . . . I am there in the basket of fruit presented to the widow. . . . I am the musk rose opening unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . . I am the one whose love overcomes you, already with you when you think to call my name. . . . - Jane Kenyon -

Blue Guru

There is a bough on the blue spruce

resemblng the face of a guru.  I can see
his form, a hand sprouting a pointed 
finger towards my living room window. 

On calm days the guru sways gently

forgiving my sins.  The sun and shadow

reveal his own shades of grey and he

does not speak, mouth a silent yawn.

Whenever the wind gusts, he gestures

with purpose, stretches closer
wagging a finger, the movement 

of his head revealing displeasure.

These are the days that I am most

observant.  Rain hangs from the prickle
of his beard, saturates his soggy fingertip
bubbles from the end of a piney nose. 

In the nude of winter, he remains clothed,

frozen in memories iced with last year's 
unforgiving, drenched days.  

Perhaps that explains our natural kinship.

We communicate through intemperate seasons,

in little gusts of wind, peeks of sunshine

the empty quiver that is winter.  His hoary 
finger no longer points, only proffers solace. 

Today, the horizon brews rain.

I can count miles between thunder claps.

Soon, blue guru and I will speak again.

The Sorting Field

It's mid- August. 
Every man I know 
is sorting something out 
rolling around an idea - 
not talking 
lost in some sort of distress. 
It must be something 
about the change of season 
or a lack thereof 

attempting to match 
mis-matched socks 
or roll pennies into 
brown parchment tubes 
working on panicking 
when they should be 
arranging a rendez-vouz 
that has nothing to do 
with anything other than 
last spring.

There has to be 
more than this early 
September -

there has to be 
more than this.

Fly-ku

broken artichoke hearts 
green and glassy on the plate– 
a black fly creeps

Altars

It all falls apart
at the knees.   

Too much 
bending 
weeding 
kneeling 
falling 

at the feet 

of lovers 
unworthy 
weed-filled 
gardens 
false god 
promises 
posing 
rock stars 
hoping 
for 

suddenly 

it’s all 
too much 
knees give way 
freely 
no use 
standing 
no need for 
canes 
walkers 
support 

smile 
fall softly 

too many altars 
so little time

Six Days of Decision

On the first day she decides
she can live without him -
buys a sun lamp 
to permeate the gloom.


On the second day she realizes
a little bit of heaven is required
to get her through, so she smokes two -
passes out to The Carpenters.


By the third day she is so bored
she flies off to Fiji.  She delights 
from her perspective, an island emerges
wet as a bobbing green beach ball.


She spends the next day listening
to sun and moon argue about illumination.
The stars witness, and begin to chatter.
On the fifth day she returns home


buys a budgie and three goldfish.
On the sixth, she finds a cat curled
on her doorstep, its green eyes shine when
she opens the door to let it inside.  


She decides she can't live without him.  
They meet for dinner, he stays forever.
The next morning finds them glued together
with sleep.  The cat lies gleaming.


The blue budgie preens and finds its own voice.
The three goldfish hover in their bowl, looking out
at a parabolic world.  The apple she picked sits 
on the wooden table, waiting to be sliced and eaten.


Ah -
so ends the seventh day.

Two Julys

Two summers past I heard you leaving

softly stepping so as not to wake me.

The room was dark and full of you

and dread that clutched at all of me.

Instinct arrived at three a.m.

to the sound of flung locks

click of a clock,  breath exiting

sharply from an empty room.

I curled in the dark, eyes squeezed

shut, a child again at forty-eight.

It was then the door re-opened

you strode back, gathered me up

as if knowing, kissed me long and hard. 

Only then did you go fully, loudly

in defiance of the fact that you had to.

I was left alone swathed in night -

transforming back into woman.

Carnival

Few can see to the end of the tunnel of love the entry beckons heart-shaped
framing an empty void had it been labeled “HauntedHouse” half the fair-goers
would politely decline citing the sudden need for candy floss the brave
would clamber into the small cars expecting to emerge from the other side
half out of their minds

anticipating that somewhere along the line a man in a mask taunting
a chain saw would roar into the moment or that severed arms and heads
would drop lifeless from the sky fingerless toothless

There would be screaming -
and plenty of it

How then, did she coax you into the tunnel?
You - with the logical mind, practical life?

Did she look at you with her goal-post eyes?
Calculate possibilities into tiny fractions,
subtractions, additions?

Did the car rattle and shake as you clasped hands and entered as fearless
as the guests in the Haunted House? Did she kiss you with her mouth open
as the tunnel gaped, swallowing you quickly?

Cobweb hair, goose-bump flesh, a strange sensation filling your belly
your heart talking in beats assuring your mind

No sign of severed arms, heads, or men with chainsaws.
No indication that the ride was faulty.
No chance of a refund at the other end.
Just the creak and sway of the car,
teetering precariously on the edge
of something unseen.

The mind a blank a magic realism painting where the grass is too green
the sky too blue her red dress too perfectly creased see through in the sunlight
nobody mentioned the tunnel of love would be so narrow lonely dark the fifty
percent chance of emerging as two instead of one but you knew it would feel good
so good to get lost in there for even a little while.

When the ride finally came to a stop, you reeled out of the car as if emerging
from a fighter plane that turned upside-down with a G8 force the bile rising
in your throat but you swallowed it back denying the need for help your legs
wobbly and unstable she was no longer holding your hand
The crowd stared as if you were a freak in the big tent and you tred to smile
put on your best front your mask dripping with the sweat of denial

She was no longer holding your hand

Always Ride a Horse on your Birthday

Did Hitler Eat Eggs

Perhaps he preferred the art of poached

over the simple act of scrambled, admired

the precision required in timing their quick

ascension to the top of enthusiastic bubbles,

slightly runny centers wobbling as they slid

across his black and white plate, a side of burnt

toast to mop up the spill, washed down by a glass

of unspoiled apple juice.  On the table a vase

of closed Edelweiss, one pinched and tucked

behind his Eva’s ear.  As he stepped off to work

Could he hear her humming

oblivious to the scream of the plate

as she scraped away his leftovers?

All heft and cloud

capped white souls

froth sky blue 

Riddled (new version of "Anyway"

I wish to die a slow death

riddled with something

incurable -

lose my mother tongue

the ability to smell fries and vinegar

or new rain on the fur of spring violets.

My cat curled, pushed

against the weak flesh of my belly

her purr a movement of fur

keeping time to the metronome

of the bedside clock,

my breath a rattled score

sung to the earthworm turn of seasons

Postcard From Here

Twenty-six days

of stories and ghosts

scribbled caricatures

sketches and silhouettes

shadows inked over cobbles

in old Montmartre a decent man

sells word art behind a beat up desk

a curl of smoke

singes the rafters grey

he calls me kind

the gristle of his beard 

mutters it

as twice he kisses me