The baby cypress trees
may someday be a wall of green
but now they point
just delicately
at the flight path overhead,
at the slender softening contrails
the last jet left.

Little hen lay young silkie eggs—
at your tender age we find
occasional cream-shelled eggs about
(half-usual size!).

How you like
to scratch a nest
under the bramble hedge
on the sunny side.

Crack a mini egg
and feel a pang—
none of us crave
breaking up
your casual clutch
but a doll’s breakfast
seems cause enough
to celebrate.
To this pleasing end
we steal from you
and give thanks.

Keep the tides
contained, sweep
sand the wind brings,
sandbag the garage,
any low opening—
let no ocean
flood our asphalt lane.

This surge
threatens piers, pilings,
pulls lost nets
and sea wrack
from the depths,
a monolith
unearthed overnight—
already everlasting
in the songs
our children chant.

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.