THE MAN IN THE DESERT
The man in the desert remembers
and a tear begins to form
A tear so long unshed
ninety percent of the water is gone
Dragging its chain of crusted drops
it carves a white canyon
down his long and leathered face
A cracked tongue between cracked lips
reaches to taste it – Oh so sweet
BEYOND THE STARS
You took me beyond the stars
If you had not held my hand
I would not have had
the courage to go
Or the strength to return
POET ALL STARS
The odds are overwhelming
Every time we play the game
we find ourselves on a level field
with the all time all world all star team
Homer, Whitman, Rumi and Omar Khayam
Wordsworth, Shakespeare, or whoever
wrote his stuff
It’s like always batting against Nolan Ryan on
his best day
Like trying to strike out Mickey Mantle, Ted
Williams, Babe Ruth without a hangover
and Reggie Jackson in October
Great poets never tire or retire, they just die
and still play with their best stuff
Soccer players today don’t have to play Pele
every day
But with translations and free agents
we write up against Neruda, Viello and Paz
Or heads up against Leo Tolstoy and Anna
Ackmanova
with an East German judge
But we play
FROST BITE
On the prairies they know
that you have to use snow
In January on the Wood River
the laces got wet and then stiff
and could not be untied
Walked the whimpering long mile home
in one frozen skate and one warm boot
part of my foot and all my toes
numb and milky white
On the prairies they know
that you have to use snow
Too much warmth all at once
can bring the feeling rushing back
with more pain than you can stand
I have since learned
and this is the sad part
It is the same way with the heart
BARN SWALLOWS
They swoop
from beneath the eaves
Carving
an invitation
to the big red ship
Come slip your moorings
and follow us across the sea
AGAIN
To look out across sunsets and centuries
to see time as nothing – – – love as all
To touch new skins in wonder
and come together again
Under a sky, dark with a million
ancient stars
WIND AND RAIN
Does wind linger long in the rain
to quench it’s desert thirst
Or in the day shiver
and hurry to the sunlight
At night does it eagerly
slip through open windows
To join us under echoing roof
and kiss our skins with
moistened lips
BEMUSED
It is never wise to be
at all ungrateful to your muse
Through the times they pick to bring their gift
are ones few of us would choose
But they do live on a mountain in Greece
while we’re scribbling in Texas at two a.m.
So they’re bright and alert and off to work
because it’s nine in the morning to them
TREE PLANTER POET
The tree planter writes a book
She is a knife
sharp as mountain morning
blade steel blue as northern lake
she swings with youthful abandon
cuts through light, shadow, and flesh
We stand white bone to white bone
and bleed into the earth and sky
Ten years later she writes another
Knife cuts dull meat and metaphor
catching only small reflections of light
through comfort of kitchen window
The reader and the blade
yearning for the grindstone
and the trail of sparks
UNDERSTANDING THE FEMININE
The moon has a bright side
that we see in the skies
or reflected in water
and eyes
The moon has a dark side
which can never be ours
she uses it only
to commune with the stars