Flakes

Look, here shines the leaf

dropped from its mother’s arms

into the soft living muck to dry 

in gorgeous shades of death

--corn and saffron, ochre and brass--

and at my touch the crisp veins flake

into a mist of umber snow 

and I watch her demise with longing, 

seeking a bit of solace in it, 

seeking to make peace with it

before the night erases all trace of it.

Bright red

The light deep inside flashes red and you

begin to stop.

You want to keep going but the light is bright 

and your body obeys and begins

to wind down and life begins to let go 

of its foothold in you, 

(it was tenuous anyway)

and there you are, ailing and fatigued

but aware of what’s happening to you-- 

(if only you didn’t have to watch) 

the spiral outward into your final ordeal--

out into that stark bloodless desert, 

into that unwanted escape from self, 

from your pleasing intimacy with matter, 

out into that shower of sparkling eyes, 

into that bleakly beautiful blackness.

Solitary

A painter would pause this late afternoon 

on Alameda beach, glimpsing paradise, 

would be seized by insight and pull out 

the brushes and palette

and begin to work quickly 

because look how the clouds 

are fattening up, gulping the light 

right out of the sky, 

existing only in tones and lines 

but still there is a kind of diamond dazzle, 

at times unblended in how it falls 

on the buckwheat, the sticky monkey flowers. 

A painter would have to dab short 

quick strokes to show how this quickening 

breeze wraps around 

my shoulders, makes my hair fly up 

with the kites and the water skiers’ parachutes. 

I too sense a big moment, though my mind is blank,

fit only for hushed gazing 

yet I feel a sumptuous intimacy 

with gulls and wind and bay and buckwheat 

that is quite solitary, 

indeed can only be noticed

unattended.

Crowded

This room feels crowded 

even though there are just two of us.

His head on the pillow, mine in my hands.

I stand by his bed 

as if he were learning to lie in it, 

as if I were his teacher, the one

who walks alongside the bike 

the child is learning to ride.

All our feelings mull around us 

like munching cows, 

sometimes touching as they wait 

to be milked 

but the hours pass and nothing is spoken, 

everything abided.

Deep down

Deep down in the stem itself, 

in my body’s engine 

where energy becomes breath, pulse, 

where pores are forced to sweat 

and salt to move through me--

there, down there,

lies my terror. 

In the zenith of that day to come 

my eyes will close half way

and Ill be alone again 

as in that jiffy before my creation.

I'll be tossed into a cold
of no stars, 

melting 

as I fly, 

a wavering glow, 

my pieces 

bright points of light

that come and then go

like glitter from a lake 

and deep down 

I know 

no ghost 

will step out 

from that beautiful 

debris.

Stooping down

My face over his face, looking at him carefully, 
inspecting iris to iris, nose to nose, 
sniffing, counting seconds between breaths,
seeing a man’s body return to newborn form, 
legs more like arms, pink, hairless. 
Think how firmly these feet once held him
upright, thick as granite, inflexible.
Despite the tremors, the many naps, 
the many days and nights of murmurings, 
he is still handsome in that smart haircut, 
the ancient Yaqui bones contain the blight
and he really doesn't complain too much. 
He is a man who likes to act like a man. 
I stoop down to blow the heat off his face 
and in the house somewhere I hear Out of Africa 
on the radio, his favorite soundtrack, and my whole 
being feels decades drift away like clouds 
over the sharp edge of ancient white plains, 
the stark flatness of our fate, 
wide and bright to the end.

The journey

In the place where the temperature falls

when I step out of the sun

into the dark cyan

shade of the forrest,

when I listen to my shoes crunch flotsam, 

the panting of my lab, the squeaks of flying beings 

high in the crowns,

where trees old and young 

lay across the stream, 

the young ones dying on the backs of their elders

and stumps mourn in gowns of lime green moss

and all around lay fallen leaves in yellow,

burnt umber and brick, and changing colors still,

where even in that state of doom, beauty 

does not abandon them.

This is where I take my grief, 

which is the price of love,

and where in mercy I rest

and let go of fear 

and love the world.