Constellate

One night propelled me
beyond what is small

and impossible
in the human heart.

Laughing, unmappable,
our eyes, mouths, hands,

and scars flashed,
made of new stars.

Then I fell.

From a distance
of too many years

and through a swelling
atmosphere, I will watch

with joy for the giant
shape you learn to make

of your life
from here.

2012

Rippling through the alley, a

low flying kite? No:
fast black bird, small beak streaming
a long white banner.

29 April 2012

Bright Moth, How Large the World is this Morning

Imprisoned in surprising
rectangular spaces all night,
a slick vertical clinging,
you did the only thing
you knew to do. Wait in the thin
space behind a dark painting.

In the morning,
French doors were
bleared light. They opened
mysteriously, as did
a memory inside you.

The memory drunkenly
curved toward more light.
You drew a flickery line
through an open window.

How quickly one
is liberated matching
light to light.

2012

Exodus

My left eye wanders
from what my right eye dreams.
In the mirror, it is a wave
parting in the middle of my face,

my own red sea. Two peoples,
one fleeing, one in chase, both
ignorant, unseeing, make
a pilgrimage from my head

into the cleft of my cathedral
chest where everyone fingers brown
bodhi seeds. When the waters mend
their seam, no one drowns.

2012

The first poet laureate

ripped off limbs of the woman tree
wrapped them into a woman ring
left her maid in a wooden breeze
and crowned himself the poet’s king.

2012

with thanks to David Mason for telling the story

in Lush

Two of my poems, "Reverie in Green" and "If we forget there is work to be done", are now featured in a new book by Rufous Press: Lush.

I'm particularly happy that a few poems by my friend and fellow Coloradoan, Cameron Scott, also live in these pages. Check him out.

“A diverse collection of contemporary poetry and prose from around the globe, Lush is a compact volume of emotive, fluid, and genuine modern day verse. This joyful selection of warm weather meanderings will speak to even the most casual consumer of poetic wordplay.” -A.g. Synclair, Editor & Publisher of The Montucky Review

“Lush is an exquisite collection, brimming with the palatial richness of summer’s luster. Like watching August light reveal the veins in shady leaves, the pieces in Lush remind us that this season of warmth is also meta-palace of memory where the scent of clover can unveil a forgotten moment or shadows on water can stir a desire long hidden within. Once again, Rufous Press has produced a thoughtful and exciting compilation of new voices.” -Megan Duffy, Editor of The Meadowland Review

“The poetry and prose in Lush span an arc of joy--rough and delicate, lasting and immediate.” -Kathleen Maher

Friendship

Before friendship can save you,
you must crash your rattling, shit-caked
semi-truck pride, release every tender eyed cow
the ones you were driving to slaughter for a low price
let them wander into the tall meadow
of flowering nettles and mullein
she left growing for you.

Before you find friendship’s nourishing weeds
you must first stand alone by a huge green garbage can
whose ashtray is full of discarded butts, and smoke one, remembering
embers passed to you, broke, or trying to quit, unable to resist
putting your lips where your friends’ lips were, taking in
smoke to make breath more memorable. You must
remember breath shared is like smoke.

Before friendship can spread your deepest sigh
you must let her hammer dynamite into your granite
heart, listen well to her story of lost breasts, lost mothers, lost sisters
found names, until her fire sends the fuse aflame, until your heart
explodes into giant boulders and tiny irretrievable shards.
You must let her glue you back together in her arms
into the shape of a hand reaching out of earth.

It is only then that friendship
hooks your hand around its hip, friendship
that is staked in a square around you, small sapling
that you are, held by sturdy ropes on a windswept plain
friendship that holds you tiny while your trunk
gains girth, prunes your bony winter twigs
to train you for a lifetime of springs.

2012

Water Speaks

I don’t know what I am
moving this way. I can’t
see myself. I know
myself by what contains

me. Shifting shores, stones
whose colors I have
no names for. If you
are not holding on

to anything, I can take
you with me. I know
myself this way, too,
by the shape I make

around you, woman
wishing you were more
like me, a bit more
free. This freedom is

too big for you. You
tremble to lose
your name, to spread
and sink so deep,

unseen, to lift
and blur so wide
you want to name yourself
a cloud, write vague

poems about rain
and floods, and living
mud. No, I’m sure
as rain and mud my way

is not for you.  Accept
this human shape
of me, the only way
I know to speak.

2012

because I arrived in the dark

what I thought was rain was the river
moving over the mountain of sleep

I woke again and again in a room with three beds
and three poets, heads resting on the soft chests of words

not a sound, not even the sh of restless
sheets, only the breath of the river

threading through poems that might be
sewing this warm inside world to the cold

alpine spring, our almost stories blinking
holes in the high spaces of night

2011

for Laurie and Ellen, KCPF

Ravens

1
Look

2
He was already
Driving home from
Taos every few miles a bird
black and black over plunged
the highway ahead  Each time she asked
him its name  That is a raven

3
You always say
that she said (1)

4
A week later hands
under hands under
a table she listens neck bent In the grand canyon
I saw two checking out
the landscape riding a thermal
playing People assume human beings

5
are the only creatures capable of aesthetic
appreciation The male and female (2) I think
have the capability of caring for one
another mate for life

6
So many sugar pouches under the leg of our vague wanting to be ravens

7
In sleep he has never flown but fallen fallen fallen

8
from buildings into sand (3)
Now she on the other
hand remembers in her stomach how
to lift and dive without

9
fear Feathers mark pages in her
books prick her thighs through
thin pockets when she crouches
She stuffs them

10
ruffled into bottles shakes them out to check for black
______________________________________
1.  So start asking about the other birds
2.  fly touching wings
3.  It doesn’t hurt