Rock Phenomena

The earth makes bricks, stacks
them with hands we call our own.

We leave openings for doors
to dark places, make windows.

Like water and wind, we eat stone.

Who can last? We carve
our names into rock domes.

Winds blow sand, water erases
letters we mistook for home.

2015

in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Abduction

Reading white-tipped feathers, I knew more.
She was stolen just inside the henhouse door

and dragged north for eight feet before
she stopped struggling, throwing poor

wings against the sharp face of her predator.
From that point, no clues. Wide prairie evermore.

No hope for pomegranate seeds. Wrong story.
Some god did not impregnate her with future glory.

Who fed? Feral barn cat? Star eyed raccoon?
Coyote who noticed the open mouthed moon?

2015

Prescott Flowers

When your arms unfold lanceolate,
My chest spirals
Fibonacci. We die into seeds.

Will you sit in the small boat
With me and row to sea?

Mourn the bees?
Notice the world is a stem

For what we want.
You too are a stem.

Most days, our rayed heads hold
Fragile yolk,
Scheming a beak, wings.

2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Designer Umbrellas

If umbrellas are daisies
and clouds, what is my head?

We tourists, for a moment,
give shelter to the boat.

We pay to point at mountains,
numb to the inner view:

Mountains, too, are parasols
along with this proud lake.

Even a field of stones
protects the under-nest.

Choose your ribbed shield.
How easy not to merge.

Over what precious thing do you open
and spread to avoid its getting wet?

2015
In response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, Designer Umbrellas, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015 (my apologies for glare on the image)

Sedona Phenomena

Any arrangement of five could be you or me.
Make my head a violet petaled bloom,
a trail head sign, a twisted tree.
Your two arms serve as penstemon,
my legs two creosote. Still, my head
could simply be a head. Twenty years ago,
Sedona was my dream.

Your limbs were nearly shrubs then,
my left leg was a sign.
If clouds were bushes and moons,
my mother limbs were clouds.
Sedona loves to dream.

The carved sign tells you how to find
the overlooks and loops.
Shout from the spires and buttes,
from shadowlines of roofs:
You are Sedona’s dream.

What is your vantage? Where will you stop?
When do you finally open your robe,
unbutton your blouse, expose rocks?
They are smaller than you think,
so close, or possibly farther away,
receding atmospherically—
Sedona’s fading dream.

2015
in response to Les Barta’s photoconstruction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Designer Radios

Press the button of the cloud.
It’s song a rusty truck
blaring absinthe green, Lautrec.

Press the button of her hand.
Finesse the station.
Who is talking?

A tree has its own buttons
that are not leaves.
Hairs press the breeze.

Record our singing.
Fast forward, reverse.
Pause the season.

If you must
control sound,
choose a CD.

Or play it real-time,
radio. Dial in.
Press me.

Even sky scrapers respond to touch.
The street has its own song
Inside your loafered feet.

Who or what
Presses what or whom?
How plays the dream?

2015
in response to Les Barta’s photo construction, exhibited at the CACE Gallery of Fine Art in Spring 2015

Dust and Sun Bathing 101

I’d seen hens do it countless times
and roosters, too—
scratch out dusty nests in dirt.
Flop onto their sides.
Kick out clawed feet.
Prop their heads awkwardly.
Raise dirt by flapping wings.
Puff their feathers.
Take in slow, yellow heat.
Almost sleep.
So when the new chicks
lost their fuzz,
ventured from hutch into private run,
why was I surprised
they did the same?
No one taught them how
to clean themselves.
Love the sun.
Shame a human.

2015

Farm Ponds

The farm pond gurgled
Like a chorus of stomachs
Waiting for dinner.

For three days it rained.
Pond became a fast river,
River, a new pond.

Each pond had a name
Only bullfrogs could pronounce.
They sounded the same.

Standing between ponds
We shook our heads in night’s song
Roaring stereo.

Pond Two rolled on south
Under roads to other fields.
Water flows downhill.

Some water stayed here.
Before red heifers came home,
Pasture drank that pond.

The first pond still shines
Just over the rise with ducks—
The sky’s own mirror.

The second pond roams
Green pasture, eating itself,
Watching me sit still.

2015

Rite

Outside it rained
and prayer flags
flew like magic carpets.
Lighting cracked
the night. We laughed
in silly play, a ritual.
Into my lucky limbs
four friends struck
earth with fists,
lit fire with friction,
spread rivulets of water
through my spine,
threw wind with finger tips
across my plains.
We spun like planets.
Took turns as moons.
I didn’t know my mother
had so many hands.
I didn’t know I was a kid
in need of them.

2015

Not Broody, but Dying

Four days after he found Geoffrey Greg Brown
sprawled dead
on her side in the run—blocking the door,
I found Rosie face down
under the roost, buff wings folded neatly
like a proper lady,
head tucked beneath herself like the curl
of a question mark.

2015