Sunflowers, Moonflowers, Wash

A tiny fly that does not sting
And can't be shooed, caught, or slapped
Harasses me with what feel like
Extra sets of brushy feet, feet
That can't be ignored. Even the fruit
On my plate, salty foods, meat,
Even the condensation on my glass
Won't tempt it away from me.
It climbs in my hair and along my skin,
And I feel it so nearly constantly
I can't enjoy my food or my transitory view
Of an extraordinarily fine afternoon
With sunflowers and moon flowers down
In the broken wash, air-brushed clouds
Arising and scurrying through blue in a hurry.

Daily hiraeth, daily saudade, daily poem.

Place is only periodicity
In the experience of the wash,
A similarity arising, time to time,
With the power to fool us into making
Something from nothing, "radical space
Adjacent to history." No such thing,
Except that we can't live without it,
No such thing, except all our metaphors
Belong to it, perform it, keep us
Forever somehow apart from experiencing,
Our trudging, sleuthing, true thing.
Shoo fly, don't bother me.

I'm Fine

The half-scorched aspen's applause
For the evening breezes, like the taffeta
Rustling of angels shuffling in
A scry-stone's stone pin seems startling
And wrong to a human used to distrusting
His own anthropomorphic whims
But not above guessing his senses
Know the surest way into the world.

And what if his first, foolish instincts
Were the closer to correct? The tree,
Lonely clone with no siblings left it,
Really was trying to be reassuring.
I'm fine, it shushed through its leaves,
I'm good at being
Fine, in fact
It's what I'm best at.

Thought to Itself

You are going home, away,
The next time you have to move.
It's not enough, anymore
That you don't stay here. You must
Go home, now, and only home.
The wind around the corner
Eagerly awaits your bones,

And what precious bones they are,
Veal to the wind, softest flesh
To the winter that gnashes
Icicles like incisors
In keen anticipation,
Not real bones at all, not bare,
Not spare, but surplus. Go home.

Esparto Papers

Much has been
Rustling in
The dry grass,

Much hissing
Fear inferred.
It's laughter,

Friends, not snakes
Whispering.
Who's afraid?

Shiver Wonder

You can't remember you,
And yes I do mean you,
Without some confusion,
Can you? Oh, who was it
Who first went by your name--
What child can you recall?

Feel, when your ghosts dare you,
What sharpest memory
Waits inside the dark back
Of your mind, innocent,
Envenomed, elegant.
That was you, was divine.

5 September 1977

Veeger. The heliopause.
The gap between the former
Joke in a Star Trek movie,

The first, in fact, and the fresh
Announcement that the latter
Was surpassed a year ago

(A year, hah, geocentric
Measurement of anthropoids!),
Consisting very nearly

Of all of my life, at least
As I know it now, fading
In my fifties (there's that year,

That calendar year again),
With scant confidence at all

Of surviving ancient scams

For enhanced longevity
(Mercury, Emperor Qin?).
Astrology, where was I?

Where art thou? It is the east,
And the dark heart of spiral
A galaxy in your hair.

Miguel of the Left Handicap

"After all the years I have spent asleep in the silence of obscurity, I emerge now, carrying my years on my back, with a tale as dry as esparto grass."

Forgive me. You were right.
I was sinister. I joke because
I love, and I am afraid.

There is a prison everyone
Knows and few
Acknowledge, a prison

With a view of knowledge.
To wit, too true, it's true,
And yet too simple.

A man who has led a life
Of suffering by the nose
Around the grinding

Mill of daily rounds knows
There are no grounds
For growing round

And round. A squire
And a square are there.
Oh whatever. Who could

Believe you were you?
An awful person making
An awful mistake. Doubt.

You should celebrate. Without
Celebration and good humor,
Life has only meaning. A play,

A synonym, a pun, a gotcha,
Get it? I knew you would. Good.
Another tremendous wrench

In the symphony of the spheres,
Another unanticipated precession,
Or just another work-around.