WRITING THE AUSTRALIA TRIP
We went to teach, we went to learn
we did a lot of both and more of some
We met amazing people – they met us
perhaps none will be the same again
Details I leave for further poems
which I hurry to hurry to write
before the ripples rippling out
are lost
clockwise and counter clock
down the toilet bowl of time
12.12.2012 AND COUNTING
Been out of Austin six months now
two oceans, some rivers, and a sea
Gathering material to throw
into a big pot of Shiner Bock
A pinch of limestone ground real fine
eye of salamander, blind of bat
and horn of ram from the Shiner cap
With branches from an old live oak
leaves still clinging to the stock
a dozen poets stirring the pot
and breathing their words across the top
Watch it bubble and settle and steam
something will scum to the surface soon
haiku to draw through a slender straw
and cups of couplets in rhyming itme
The Mayan calendar is running down
but I’ve got next year’s Marilyn and
ten new poems, and plenty of faith
that awe and Austin will carry on
MEDITERRANEAN MUSINGS
In the W hotel in Barcelona
……….. the beautiful people
There’s one now
……….. topless by the pool
No tan lines
confirm she does this often
And she does it well
……….. look good I mean
As if it was
… and it may well be
……….. a full time job
FINDING GIACOMETTI
It is a high calling to be in trouble
as you travel along the road
creating good Samaritans at every trip and fall
The trick starts out by renting a car
from a small gas station/liquor store
Sketchy directions and a wrong turn
an unmanned toll booth and two tunnels
some workmen suggest the one to the right
a tunnel we thought would surface in England
Not England but where?
Industrial park on a holiday
one man working in the flowers
directions to get us a little closer
And then, what you don’t find
unless you get this lost
A town with a Giacometti university
and a statue in the circular town square
that might well have been worth
coming all the way to France to see
ROAD TRIP
There is a stretch
in the long loping hills of Montana
where the laws of speed and time are not enforced
Where over every hill there’s another hill
that far to the bottom
and that far up the other side
A-sail, a-sail on an earth-rocked ship
two thousand feet above an ancient sea
Wheels endlessly humming
to the radio’s timeless tunes
Suspended forever midway
between those you’re running to
and those you’re running from
DIRECTIONS TO LOS NOVIOS RANCH
for Claire and George
A hundred miles south of San Antone
Los Novios means The Sweethearts
They had Brahmas in the pasture
they had a gator in the pond
They got big Blue Indigo snakes
there to eat them pesky rattlers
Though mesquite may be as close
as you get to a sweetheart tree
The roadrunner on the woodpile
is all puffed up and singing
Hey girls, look at me
THE NOT QUITE DEAD SEA
Thirteen hundred and thirty eight feet
below sea level
Unless you live around there
and then all of the other seas
are a long way in the air
Driving through the West Bank
watch the signs as you drop away
After the first six feet you are living with the dead
Down, down, down, you go
foot by foot and year by year
heading for Herod’s health spa
King David’s refuge, and source of balms
used in the mummification of young King Tut
Eight and a half times saltier that the ocean
You float in the water so thick that you can’t sink
and air so thick the sun won’t burn you
as you look up and East into the hills
where the scrolls were buried
You don’t have to read them, you can feel them
OREGON IN WINTER
The big plane slows, mists rise to meet it
droplets begin to play along the windows
My body, mostly water
falling through clouds, mostly water
I have been traveling some
The water in me comes from
the limestone caverns of Austin
the rivers of Upstate New York, and
million year old glaciers in the Rockies of Alberta
The clouds have been around the world
rising and falling as river, air and sea
Quiet now, as I am
I can feel them meeting again
hear them, telling stories
NEGATIVE SPACE IN NEW YORK CITY
At the Guggenheim
they make a big deal
about the negative space
between the right arm
and the body
of Picasso’s “Woman Ironing”
Which makes sense to me
as a boy from the prairie
Since I have often been told
that there are many
beautiful buildings in this city
And yet have only seen
a few tops and sides
My gaze always glancing
off glass and stone
In its wild rush
to grasp and embrace
any small piece of sky
THE INNER CRITIC ON HOLIDAY
You will get lost in Paris
it is not your fault
it was planned that way
You may find it unforgivably gauche
not to know the left bank from the right
Let it go
It is not necessary
to criticize oneself here
they have waiters for that purpose
And looking out, not in
you may stumble Americanly
upon Marie’s little side street shop
with bread as new as the cheese is old
and a three dollar wine to bridge them
or catch a brief glimpse
of that seriously happy young man
pedaling down the very center
of the Champs d’Elysee
one foot and a base fiddle
resting on his skateboard