Snowmelt seep
from granite peaks
into granite cavities—
interior reservoirs fill,
snowmelt seek release.

Circle of sand
newly damp—
an upsurge
from within,
a wellspring
in palmfuls
pure enough
to cup.

Scree fine
as wet flour,
roil in your shallow start—
even a pool
can gently
jump the trail
and flow
flush to the ice-cut edge.

The downy rain
so fine
it powders round
too mild to fall
renews the patio
most days
so dull
but now wet-gray, satin
as a young
elephant seal
in from the undertow.

Weave me a spell
I can pull over my head
when daylight
through the curtains
hurts the hollows
behind my eyes—
a heavy spell,
a force field
I can feel—
I need to feel more
invisible somehow
less dimensional—
not missed
or even noticed
gone asleep.

Georgia O’Keeffe clouds
crowd the sky today—
some vast Southwest vista
empty, the god of rain away.
Why winter here Tlaloc?
Where the freeways run
with noise? Whole hillsides
lost to light quakes
or lit cigarettes?

On land scraped clean
before I was born
old freeways
with saint names
the numbers
I know.

Ahead a loose tarp
waves to cars
from a truck bed
flurries of petal hearts!
Drifts of blossom
obstruct lanes—
road and sky
a moment
the same.

Mellow with sun
and minerals
I stir the surface
of the pool—once
a water tank,
the concrete
dark now
with age.
Overhead palms sing
with orioles
and dead fronds
like vespers
in the valley wind.
So warm
I wait, patient
as a rattlesnake.
Night with her milky
wash of stars—
like other
desert animals
she too
drinks here,
far from anywhere.

Into your pockets
I stuff
loose magnolia petals
soft as old
dollar bills—
they bruise
easily. Miles above
the everyday
our glass car
trails hedione, molecules
too small to see,
that delicate earth scent
of love
and early spring.

The unstable elements
you heat,
the hate
you forge,
the alloys
you armor in—
your work
begins already
to decay—
a nuclear tendency
to degenerate
the legacy
you leave us
all exposed.

Abandoned machinery
and memory
mark this stretch
of beach cliff
unsafe. Hillsides
wave still
with mustard plants,
yellow-yellow-green.
No young
mustard leaves
for us
for thirty years
at least.
Refinery employees
for decades
watched migrating whales
from this same spot,
let hydrocarbons leach
into the paths we walk.
Only the roots of weeds now
make amends.

Over rafters
in raw air
we drape
nasturtium stems—
great lengths
torn tender
from the banks
of black streams.
Moon-faced leaves
in curtains
catch splinters
of sun—the day
through gaps
between boards
like so many stars indoors.