As is your mouth

There is only one reason
hummingbirds
found us.

Red.

The rest is all
drunken
sweet breath.

2012

Enter the Western Slope

When water wears me
down, what shape
will I be? Canyon, spire,
sharp walled butte?
What is loose falls scree
at my feet. Sage grows.
You can’t find firm ground.
Angles are steep.

It seems wrong
what is hardest
stands so long.

I become a landmark,
some kind of sign.

Don’t be fooled.
Impossible toothy leaves
sprout from my fissures.
Roots a fine filigree,
fingers seeking pinholes
I’d rather ignore.

Every blind spot is a war,
a tiny door where I fall out of myself
to let you in, slow and thin,
one grain closer to nothing
but air standing there.

2012

The Eclipse

1
How can one give another a solar eclipse?

Too many instructional text messages
and fumbled cell phone calls,
mandatory interstate pull overs
when thunderheads finally clear,
driving further east out of shadow,
stacking three cheap pairs of shades
on one face and peering through one ply
of facial tissue. Pass the stack quickly.
Hold the tissue an inch from noses,
sit in the back seat behind tinted windows.

That’s how. With five layers of protection.
The wrong tools. Some will go great lengths
behind a guise of exceptional experience
or edification, afraid of being forgotten.

2
If only one could become as permanent,
as rare as a memory of crescent sun,
or better, sunring—if one finds oneself
at just the right place on earth—
one might be remembered at least
every so many years. Remember when she…?

It takes dedication, eclipse chasing.
Ambition to stare down immortality.
One could go blind, one could see
some kind of lingering bitten light
burnt inside closed eyes, bright holes
wherever one looks. An irony of focus.

Don’t worry. Vision returns to children,
lovers, friends. Eyes and skin adjust
to absence and never again.

2012

Doggerel for Lost and Found Wisdom Teeth

Until I slurped soft food for most of one week,
rice baby cereal, yogurt, Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup,
I didn’t know the deep, joyful animal of my teeth,
or how long it takes to thoroughly chew a bite of food,
or how mysterious the cavernous corners of my jaws,
or how far my tongue can reach, dislodging
vanished crumbs from fleshy wound and crease. Who knew
these tiny, precious bones nestled in such tender pink
could beg and plead ferociously: feed me something
wild or tough, let me earn my keep. Now I know
my wisdom teeth have always been my secret leader.

2012

Low Water

The gentle South Platte carves eyes, no, almond-shaped
Sandbanks inside itself, juxtaposed with weedy islands

In the shape of odd legs. “The water looks alive,” he said.
She looked for the life he saw. It was there, crawling light.

A nod. Mosquitos not a problem yet, the two could dream
Of spending long days here, sitting side by side with quiet minds.

Content. Perhaps a little bored or spent. Noticing the echoed bloom
Of clouds above the distant cottonwoods. Dissecting dried weeds.

Perhaps both remembering the stolen day they waded
Face to face in this same place four years ago, shirts pulled up

Just enough so winter’s white bellies could mend and touch
While water traced the almond shapes of ankles.

No one watched from the high bank that day.
Even herons overlooked the danger of that kiss.

Today there is no kissing or risk, just the simple shapes
Slow water makes of sand and love and flat bliss.

2012

Cat as Metaphor for Hass’s Non-Metaphors

The rain’s cadence reminds me
of my cat’s clicking while she hunts
moths in windows. As I pause
to think if the sound is the same
truly the same, she approaches
the top of my pen with itchy cheeks
glides her face against the cap
motoring her inner kitty mystery
which also sounds like rain.
And I think of Hass who isn’t one
to mess much with metaphor
but offers up the whiskers of the world
just as they are, delivered by the body
memory, words. How much I want
to make the world a metaphor.
How much the world resists
and clicks such making.

2012

Desire builds a house

of me for you to live in.
Doors are everywhere.

The walls are roaring
flames sucking stale air.

You can’t enter.
I burn myself out.

You’d never know
a house was ever there.

2012

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