Crater

I need to say something soon before

my voice becomes a muffle and then

like stones in the stream bed.  The tips

of the hydrangea flowerets are blue

paint curls in the heart, color gently

flakes at the center.  Then comes the white

hot feeling of rolling an ankle over a stone.

Pollen dusts over the face of a stream.

The last stars from a crater of stars pass overhead.

I think, tonight, but the limitless

blue message of thought keeps passing me

like a downed plane flapping its baleful

advertisement.  Its impact like a good

person who cannot live up to an expectancy.

The letter carrier carries the apology.

I want to report the disappearance

to the milkman, but he is gone.

He has no business here.

Lacunal Contents

Today is not the day, and tomorrow
the landscape will not be ready
And the next day and the day after that, rare fruit.
Eventually, you stop wearing your vest.
The lighthouse lights on only odd
days of the week.

Something drops, like a pebble
behind every good gesture
and at the end of the evening
all good gestures drop
without the proper postage
like the morning paper
unto a yard
of a family who has been on vacation
for months and will never return.

And at the end of the evening
others drop like clothes

distracted by warmer places, and stopping
to rub the fur of dandelions from their eyes
drop the questions of their wives into a bird's throat.

A cloud drops gently over the landscape of the day.

This is just one occurrence in the processions of mysteries. 

Mistakes and Echoes of Mistakes

The rain cannot
separate now from the river.
Just as your dog
cannot separate itself
from night.
Her tumors have
finally stopped growing
and the thick necklace
is complete.
And no matter
how simple you
cannot comprehend
the ocean at night
with a sea of luminescent
jellyfish in it.
But maybe, I suppose
in the dark
one might
recognize the swallowing
the fading absence
or the moving fins that have not
even evolved enough to protect you.
You see where this is going.
There are other reasons why
we bury things that culture
and anthropologists have failed
to figure out.  It has more
to do with ourselves
digging things up than we think.
But now it is time to dig
ourselves through
the damp darkness once again
to listen to an inadvertent song
and drink in the cold air.
Already we
are beginning to feel safe.
We are beginning
to feel the language returning
to the pages of the book
whose words had only
left for a moment
had blurred where
we stopped seeing them.

Unintentionally

the light enter the dancing girls
mnemonic footwork like a hurricane
sent to rescue you from the trailer home.
Now the winds sweep your wild nights.
It is like this even after waking up from a long dream
of fishes or goldenrods.  The grainy music
distorted by the legs of tress and swing sets.
The hallways are littered in pretzels
the outline of a young boy's face.
No matter how many times we've put him to bed
he sees something and pokes his head up.
There is enough smoke and dust but
never a good jazz band.
Not even the ones that keep popping up in poetry
can compete.  Something begins to form
but it is not a ghost crying out its displeasure,
angry about its state.  But on some nights
when the sick do cry, sometimes watch, you'll see,
dancing to a god that left her no home
no bridge to kick a stone from.

Fact Realized

You try to get everyone
over.  You try to crush
insects just so it isn't
messy.  You try not to feel
like you've just taken a swig
of ocean juice.  Like a martini
glass has held wine, or the fuzz
hanging off your chin is
an old way of thinking.
You notice even the bumpy
maintenance crew.  The smoke
hanging in the bushes
has just breathed a star into orbit.
Sand swirls in your mouth.
And then you learn
that your friend has died.
I had wanted to invite you.

Sample History of “Sense of Wonder”

One can only lie back in bed and think that he

should bud somewhere in the wine cellar.

Or think flowers have a happier time of it being

potted…you know the image.  One must write the story

in the laundry or on the back of a defeated mermaid

slipping below the surface no matter if the lamp

distorts the glare through the lugubrious windows.

No matter if on Tuesday love attracts

an obsolescent fruit or kisses dry wetting

another world but not this one.  A cluster

of tree boughs wag in a simplifying motion.

Bats siesta amid the clatter.  That’s what I

love about them and my aunt too!  But who

doesn’t glimmer though the ash was what I was

leading to.  Who doesn’t use his lamppost as a searchlight

or a bread truck delivering the tapered roll

along with the wheat , the white and the rye?