HEAD
OUT FOR A STROLL ON MY 80TH BIRTHDAY
Husks curl here, and late gourds
in autumn, in the high-ceilinged days
when nature writes the score for one last fling
and wind drops its temperature to match your own.
Pecans, in defiance of the crow, shower the path
oiled and ripe and pushing for knobby fingers
to trim away the bitter shield,
as willing as I to undress themselves for the touch.
This is the first day of the last song,
a whispery day of beckoning
as whimsical as the red hat I wear,
and the Spanish skirt
that flirts with the wind.
And the huaraches, now dependent on the squirrel-head cane
carried only when no one else is near,
that leads me to the orchard
for a last wrinkled dance of pear
to party my lone table.
Time and enough for wasting time
with crusty earth!
The crow, as steeped in years and as flaunting in its caw,
is as ready as I to take the day by its selvedges
and fold it to sheet music
and sing it to
the highway’s madly indifferent throng.
Published, NFSPS 2006
BIRTH OF A HERMIT
It’s bad luck to move a broom
…A Mother’s Wisdom
All these years you have said you could be a hermit.
It would be easy for you, you could live
in that forest alone, no one, nothing
except the coyote talking with you at midnight
or the deer you know is there, but can’t lure
out into the open with your imitations.
I can see you at first dark, small flames
of a campfire licking limbs broken
from the oak tree, a rabbit skinned to the pink
and impaled on the prongs of a whittled stick, dripping,
throwing up halos of smoke to the moon.
You say you could be happy.
I would not be there for you to air your thoughts on;
the hermit life isn’t for me--if I tried it for one night,
I would precipitate your expectations before nightfall.
And a hermit is not a hermit
if someone’s there as a reminder of the voyage,
the long road, the potholes sometimes filled with tears,
the constant repairs, always the fixing,
each time with less dream and more delusion.
Maybe the hermit’s forest is the final destination.
I wouldn’t mind if it was, I’m as worn as overused language.
The brooms I’ve left behind are a trail
no woman wants to follow. No matter how far we went,
or where, the road narrowing, the ruts deepening,
just down the road, around the next turn
was always the last place. Maybe this is it.
Puiblished--PST
DAYBREAK IN BIG TIMBER
He sits in a daydream high above frost
that lies like a stuffed quilt over patches
of leaves. For this given moment
no tree stirs, no sound rises from a stillness
as pure as the dawn he knows will come…
Voices of coyotes return to offer night,
which is theirs, to day, which is his. The alpha
of the pack resounds authority in waves
like the ripples from a boy’s tossed rock;
yips of cubs at romp bounce hills,
and nearer, then nearer, the timber owl
enters into morning’s conversations.
The bark of a fox squirrel brings all sounds
full circle, and dawn enters. Light chases
shadows up the ravine; somewhere, a yard dog
yawns loudly. Sun hits the deer stand,
stirs the lone hunter; shakes him back
from awe to his forgotten purpose.
The hunt gets slower each season. There are
fewer deer this year, few nesting quail flushed.
The wood duck house above the pond
has been unoccupied for two years now…
1st, 05 PST
Published