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 … Continue Reading ››

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.