His Lines

Phone light dances across the panes

of his small, rectangular black-framed glasses.

With my eye I draw the shape of his hand becoming a wrist,

forearm becoming a bicep, shoulder, inclined neck

like a hungry ant crawling the line he makes against space,

pressed upon the world, no pencil in hand.

A young artist once, I realized that to simply perceive

line and value—light, penumbra, shadow—

is as rewarding as creating them on paper, on canvas.

I vowed to live my life like that: no patron, no place

needed to store large, lonely Modern paintings,

or cardboard sleeves to stash charcoal sketches, yellowing.

Here I am now, in my 50s, unknown but knowing.

My own lines softened, blending. So be it.

“What do you want to do,” he asks.

“Stare at you watching your phone,” I say and ask,

“What do you want to doooooo,” flubbing my finger

over my lips on the oooooo like two fleshy, silly guitar strings,

my mouth the sound hole.

He grins, “Now I don’t know, since you asked it like that.

Anything is possible.”

For Dorell on our 13th Valentine’s Day

Why Not Tell Myself I’m on Vacation?

Why not tell myself I’m on vacation?

Look at the blue mountain there, the peach sunrise       

behind it while I stretch, hands prickling with cold.

I live here, sure, and work hard, but to say I’m on vacation

sharpens my eyes, softens my heart toward this day,

wondering what novelty of beauty or kindness

I’ll find in the people I meet, as if joy is dormant

beneath the mundane surface of every single thing.

Felt Heart

It is easy. Gather

colorful puffs of wool. Roll

them into hints of shapes—

one large asymmetric lump

and several tubes—hold

these fiber springs against

a foam brick, stab

them into hardness

with a notched needle. Lay

the forms upon each other, prick

for six hours until they

stick together, resemble

your heart, complete

with ventricles and atria.

You are not through. Tattoo

in twisted wool thread forked arteries in red

over blue veins upon the tiny fist

of fuzzy muscle, one that could pump

wool blood

through a wool being built by gods—

your own hands and heart—

against the cold world.

But who has time for that?

Only wool women with wool wombs.

Stop with the precious heart, its hacked tubes,

disembodied totem in your wrinkled palm.

Promise yourself to love like this

feather light, wounded and beautiful.

It just happens

Leaves relax into winter work of becoming mud

in the driveways and guttered curbs of Portland.

They even cast themselves as chemical prints—

countless, urban concrete shrouds of Turin,

their palms shadowed points of dark reminiscence.

He falls in love with the city’s tannic smudge

like faces found in charcoal scrawl beneath his thumb,

eyes shocked wide on the stained page, unblinking,

reflecting any pinpoint of light the city permits,

accommodating, elevating every gutsy Gethsemane.