Guess What Rock

Moab recedes in the mind of the guy
Who used to live there and made all the stuff
That lots of people in lots of places
Besides Moab identify with life:

Love, parenthood, money, debt, work, mistakes,
Those long joys and sorrows that each seemed brief
Whenever he was gripping the other,
Except for the few things that can't be dreamed.

Drive Safe

Safe home. Homey, humble
Sometimes earnest, sometimes fierce,

Chunked phrases from which we build
The pre-fab conversation

Of modular social lives.
Enough is enough, we say,

Although it's not true enough.
I sat while you collected

Wild geraniums, but then
I couldn't drive fast enough

For you to the library
And you had no patience left

To listen to anything.
Then I waited once again

As you returned your
Growing away present

To the kindly couple
Who tolerated our toddler

And embraced her fun and funny
Ways the way they had embraced

The broader world all their long
And genuinely helpful lives.

And then I watched out
Of their picture window,

Out of the corner of my eye
In the muddled middle of small

Talk about the end--the end
Of this beginning we'd made

To a friendship now we were
Moving again, hundreds of miles,

The end to our time in this valley,
The end to meditation,

And I scribbled a poem in pencil
While everyone chatted and waited

And I left it on the table. Enough.
Never enough. Drive safely. Safe home.

At First and Final

At first and final
Readings, the sutra
Appears unusually
Cryptic, even for
The mystical
Christian, Sufi,
Kabbalistic, or Vedic
Traditions, even

Among the earliest
Cuneiform, hieroglyphic
Oracular nonsense.
What is this? The sensible
Reader on encounter
With such reeking,
Lung-choking, tent-filling

Incense, might ask. Fair
Enough. We must uncover
If we hope to discover.
Here, literally translated,
Word for word, in the five
Word verse of the old school,
Following the strict rule,

Perhaps mnemonic for oral
Recitations, of noun, verb,
Adjective, preposition and other,
Is the original hymn in English.
Punctuation has been avoided
As interpretive and anyway
Nonexistent in the petroglyph

Of the gnomic prayer itself:

"Time be good to the
Person have new of and
Year do first in a
Way say last for that
Day get long on I

Thing make great with it
Man go little at not
World know own by he
Life take other from as
Hand see old up you"

How do we interpret
The strangeness of these
Common terms arrayed
In implausible, not to say
Impossible formations?

One line of thinking,
Extra hungry, hopes these words
Hide clues to buried treasures.
Somewhere in the nearby mountains
A tomb, a chest of precious metals waits.

Others have interpreted them
As messages from advanced
Aliens, extraterrestrial,
For puzzles, for good or for ill.

I know they are exactly
The words you know best.
Be content with that. Escape
Bewitching speculation
And narrative. Be at rest.

Here's the Thing

Sometimes you'll know
What the phrases are
Saying, sometimes you

Won't. You'll wait, wondering,
Ok, when is someone going
To explain this bullshit to me?

That's ok. That's good. Don't
Get down on yourself or anyone
Else. You got a long wait

Coming. That's all the phrases
Are saying. Buster, you got a long,
Long wait coming. Got it?

It Winks at You

In the waving grass
Between the house
And the deer-worn,
Juniper-sagebrush
Rockslides and dry
Wash where the snow
Fell like communion
Wafers that melted
Into the true spring
Flesh of the god of another
Religion than the first
Ones practiced around here.
     But
I regress. Supposedly,
I'm meditating
On the illusion
Of any being but this
Interbeing winking
With every breeze
Brought from the far
Slopes of the small
World to wave
Bodhisattvas at
These tasseled heads
Of invasive grasses
Visited by those nearly
Unaltered, unalterable
Perfections reiterated
In the predatory patterns
Of the glittering, visiting,
Hover and whirr of recurring
Dragonfly wings.

Hide Out

In the almost open,

Somewhere out of the line
Of sight but not bunkered,

Not positioned to spy
On others, draw a bead.
Just behind the fence

Behind the house
That doesn't belong to you
That you have to leave soon

And should be packing right now.
Take a moment on a stump
To enjoy the breeze

That does what you are
Doing, on its way around
Invisibly in the open.

Is Not Enough

A pretty world
Of familiars.
A terrible
World of complaints.

A fantastic,
Immaculate
World of fancy
And invention.

A dreary world
Of work and chores.
A prayerful world
Of holy light.

The last real world
Someone programmed
As antidote
To all the rest.