Nature

Prodigals

Only five percent
of the ocean floor

is mapped.
The rest is unknown—

a deep subconscious
we crawled out of, once,

and return to
as foreigners,

except for the salt
in our blood,

and like some half
-remembered song,

our strange
capacity for floating—



Meadow

Doldrum day. Such heat
and listless air

and a riot on the ascent–
snow lilies, wild columbine,

chickweed, yarrow,
blessed lupine,

all strewn along
the unsettled talus slope.

Nearly a hundred
in the shade,

the salt on my skin
a mockery of snow.

Of all I carried
up, you were by far

the weightiest
thought—

the longest shadow,
the most insistent thirst.

For hours now
I have held petals

on my tongue,
rivers in my arms,

to offer you–
where have you gone?



Yūgen

A gap between gingko leaves
suggests a bird—

between real things,
impressions,

for better or for worse—
what makes space negative?

Is it the color of the sky,
what is defined,

or what falls behind,
and is it intentional?



Chelan

Earlier today
I was watching

sugar ants
make an easy

ingress through
the open screen door,

like spilt beads from
a split necklace,

recovering
themselves, bit

by amber bit,
making something new

but not unexpected–
The form reveals itself.



Solstice

This day was longer
than the day before it

late filtered sun
on snow-laden trees

winter is textural
rime ice and powder

everything built
upon another

a cold pastiche
this punched out step

in a snowfield
an irreversible mark

but not indelible
sharp punctuation

this night this storm
will erase it

nothing lasts
not even nothing

Travel

The Garden State Welcomes You

First seen from afar
bas relief of steel

the edges of Manhattan
and proof that it does end

and one hot train from Newark
is how it begins

a car on its rails
a needle in its groove

a burst of static
and the track starts to play



D Street

Eight-oh-eight in Encinitas
surfers hold their place

like knots in a net
the chipped tooth moon

the boldness of Jupiter
night comes humid and velvet

and matte
the ocean

all and always the ocean
even upstairs in the small

corner room
with its small open window

even in this heat
already half asleep

as the train rankles
cicadas and the coming dark



CDMX

Al pastor with big hunks
of piña, a raucous song

coming from a band
of young drunks,

is it Roma, Condesa?
These streets run

around and around
like a race track.

Cerveza at altitude. Joven,
cinco más por favor,

con todo. What warmth
and light at this hour

of night. And absolutely
nothing at right

angles, walls coming out
like full bellies,

pavement in riot,
this city sinking down

into the prior.
Poco que sé.

You were a child here,
and so are more lovable here,

or, I love more here—
innocence is fearless,

if indefensible.
Every wall a canvas,

alebrijes line the streets,
bronze marigolds, a hundred

altars for the dead,
flies in the eyes

of sugar skulls, endless
limes, vats of jamaica water,

it whets an appetite,
new words, tlalpeño,

can I eat it?
I could even be happy here.

I could ride a bike to the Zocálo
sip tamarindo and never

ever learn how to say doubt.
Look at the size of this sky,

this city that floats
in a sea of itself, and tell me

over midnight tacos
what is and isn’t possible.



Intaglio

We all gathered around the prints:
Somewhere in the Vollard suite

a girl leads a minotaur
through the night

after a maze of loops
and airy ateliers

the effect is stark–
the stars are gouged out

the faces lit
by some internal source.

It notes he is blind.
The aquatint

is Rembrant-black
the curator said,

an opaque way to state
more than, I think–

a night that dark
is felt, not seen.

Featured

December 16

What do you say
to a man who is dying?

A fact, just as it is
twenty-eight degrees

out, the sun set
three hours

and thirty-five
minutes ago, this is

a man who is dying,
but is still alive.

Careful, things fall
easily here,

this the greatest
distance, none

could be
further.

What hues
in that sunset!

A slow burn
over the bay,

the city changes
its face, harder

edges of night,
but ribbons of traffic,

headlights, taillights,
half coming, half

going, so graceful at
a distance.

I said it is twenty
-eight degrees out,

and of course it doesn’t
matter, there are no

tenable bridges
or tethers, no words,

no roads, this man
is dying, and

the forecast
says more snow.



Gestalt

One has to dig out eventually. It’s very hard 
to get all the life out of life. It abhors a vacuum, 

I know, having flown out for the funeral, cleaned 
for the estate sale, while back at home bindweed 

slipped into my neat row of eggplants and choked 
them out. I was drinking sweet tea in late heat 

under a kudzu-clogged carport, marveling at 
how time and place are inherent in the ground: 

From the initial descent, these roads were rust
-colored threads, familiar red clay, and not unlike grief: 

Resisting, impermeable, until it gives way. And so 
we bury the things we love, commit them to the earth, 

for safekeeping, or, I don’t know— It does what we 
cannot. When I finally came back to these gray skies 

my harvest was already done in by fall rains: 
A field of felled tomato stems, liquefying, putrid, 

and on them plasters of blight, forests of mold hairs,
copious and fine. Collapsing husks returned to whence 

they came, rat-bitten skins burst to reveal bright seeds, 
like so many small promises, each one saying: 

Even neglected, even laid to waste, nothing 
is ever wasted, nothing is ever gone, no, not completely—



Travels with the Later Romantics 



I. 


Shelley said THAT COLOSSAL WRECK! 
Smith said THAT ANNIHILATED PLACE!


Well, it could have been worse we say
unless, it really couldn’t. 


After Ivan we drove back 
to the Gulf, sun beating down 


on lifted roads, prized yachts 
tucked high in trees, natural 


as fruit, dispossessed stairs 
leading up to 		


Gone the shore, the dunes 
smoothed flat, 


and a refrigerator stuck there 
MAYTAG of MAYTAGs


and when we opened it
live fish swam out;


we threw them back 
the best we could. 


 



II. 


At Land’s End the land did.


A whale breached offshore,
creating or conjured up by 


the commotion on the beach.
Barnacled gray, in alien skin


well beyond that of
the sunburnt hordes,


all peeling red and mas cerveza—
memory does tend to improve a place.


I got a mug. 
Chipped rustic clay,


a cartoon humpback 
hovers over an azure ocean 


laid down cleanly 
in a brush-stroke.


Beside El Arco, 
thin thoughts of birds 


fly in front of an orange
-lacquered sun.


If drawn with beaks 
they might intone TRUTH IS BEAUTY


but out of the mouths 
of these birds, 


more likely a complaint:
The glaze has glued


their wings to the rock 
formation, denies

the curled whitecap 
the relief 

of finally
breaking.



III. 


Behind green alder curtains 
the bay pretends


to move, abetted 
by the breeze and three gulls 


feigning stillness.
Beneath, 


their slabby feet 
beat time


against the current.
Only a yacht disturbs 


the flat placidity, 
churning the surface, 


showing depth, 
but in turn hiding 


keel and ballast, 
obscuring its true weight.


I’d forgotten how deep 
duplicity runs  


in the course 
of new acquaintance, 


with no more 
malice than a blade 


of grass—
an edge nonetheless, 


couched among
stands of clover 


and lawn daisy, 
purveyors of the sortilege 


he loves me, loves me 
not. 


But I’ve abandoned 
augury, these birds 

grown complacent 
in unseasonable warmth, 


only too happy 
to take it as it comes, 


be it STRONGLY, WRONGLY, or VAINLY.  
The moon today is full and faint 


in the peerless blue sky:
The O in Omen? 

Or, the longing part 
of who? 


Or just an echo 
of the sun.