TRAVELING WITH A MAP
(the navigator's defense)
Riding shotgun with the map,
you have your fingers
on the body of your land,
blue veins, crimson arteries,
your country pulses
in your hands.
When you say
turn left,
into a holsteined silence,
a vale of ferns,
a dusty road,
you are traveling
by an instinct
your driver cannot share,
seeking your country's heart,
knowing where you should be
now.
SMALL POEMS
What does the waking bird ask
from the nest in the eaves
in the clean dawn?
Shadow of a plane--
for a moment something
ancient and...still hungry.
A soprano wind,
a baritone waterfall--
my spring opera.
STORM WARNING (version 1)
Wind shocks the chimes
by the back door,
driving the cat's eyes wild.
Daffodils a shiver of color
on the hill.
Across the fence
a neighbor turns
the volume up:
music sounds
like some green sea.
BREEZE ADMONITION (version 2)
A breeze tickles the minuscule chimes
dangling by the canvas flap
over the hovel's crawlspace,
persuading the kitten's eyes open.
Dandelions a sallow innuendo
on the mounded dirt.
Across the property line
a dwarf
with a harmonica
coughs up
some green phlegm.
FACES ON THE BLACK HILLS
The wind
no longer sweeps straight
from glacier country
to crash
huge
on the clean ribs
of a holy place.
ANOTHER BAPTISM
I have gone to the river at night,
forcing my way through the cattails
to a muddy, secret spot,
and crouched there, convulsing, panting,
like an animal giving birth,
and slowly put my clenched hands
into the living water, opened them,
and released the things
it was time to let go:
debris of love and life.
Standing again
on trembling legs,
head bowed,
water slipping from my fingertips
like beads of silver fire,
the crickets gone silent
with the sound of my coming
begin a tentative song.
I am cleansed to the bone
and moonlight shines
straight through me.
CONVERSATIONS WITH A FATHER-IN-LAW
The album lies between us:
a compass
given to clumsy navigators.
He points to the picture
of a solemn boy
between solemn parents
and says,
"he was like this..."
He was a flexed and gleaming tension
on a diving board.
Released, he burst from the depths
laughing, shaking off a rainbow.
These pages are mined.
He finds a brittle pose
before a prom
and says,
"he was like this..."
I put my face into the mat of hair on his chestSlowly.
and understood the meaning of home.
He untangled my hair from blackberry vines.
His skin tasted of apples.
Pages turned.
A picture
standing
by an old car:
"he was like this..."
He teased a Harley through small, easy townsGraduation:
with me clamped to his back like a shadow,
learning the scents of hot leather and dust,
holding on. Always holding on.
"he was like this..."
He was like this...