Soak the day
until its soft colors
drain and only
an outline
of all we did
remains—a memory
new enough
we still see it
the same—a vague shape
against the sun
that evening
carries away.
Category Archives: Published
Heart Swell
We saw the way
you let love in,
the little door
you opened
when the light
began to change—
and night pressed
cool against your face.
When your heart
began to swell
the way the moon will
just before rain
we saw the wide world
in your eyes again,
that wild joy
love sometimes brings.
Moor Your Ragged Houseboat to the Bank
Little finger
of a moat
protect one side of this city
from another, neither better
for this strip of bay water.
One freeway
to tuck
under the other:
mother daughter,
shy toddler
of an on-ramp.
A lap of wet clothes
and a bottle,
a tramp and a backpack gang
tagging the insides
of factories.
They leave they’ll leave eventually.
Silt, settling
in your belly,
melting trench songs
men sang
in the days of industry
will fill you up, give herons
a place to step, drink
fish, and all of this,
these sad last
signs of settlement
will muddy-up.
Backcountry
Night, wide-brimmed,
settles wild wanderings
in our early
American hearts, fatigue
live chains
loathe to lift themselves
yet imperceptibly intertwined
in our legs again. Let’s lie down
by the stream (she knows
she’s older than her name)
and sink in. The poems
we speak in sleep,
thick with reeds and wet
with recent rains, may camouflage
our foreign origins. The moon,
she is a soft lens.
Beforeglow
A softening of syllables,
a bright blur
on the vegetables,
the humidity we listen in
perceptible, and the sky beyond
dip-dyes to blue.
Concrete made a city
of our scenery, but the morning
is yielding, otherworldly,
and the distance, however real, thins
to see-through, interrupted
by the air between.
Earth Eaters
The earths we lure them with
fit inside
their delicate mouths,
just sized
to sift sand.
We interrupt
great nebulas
they spit
with our universal nets,
no yield yet
but gravity
and celestial dust.