What I love about youth

It all starts with many days,
long and gradual

lulling and liquid

loose days that lay about,

taking up space
without encumbrance
lying full moon nights

sewn together into boughs,
a giant wood of days
vast and lush.

Days begetting days.

That's what I love about youth.

When I pass the old cemetery on Hesperian

It's when I pass the graveyard where old
headstones wilt in the thistle wreaths

and fog bends to sob over
the whole sad and lonely mess.

It's when I park the car and point
my camera to the ravens turned to me.

That's when my dearest dead, one
by one raise a beautiful head.

The beautiful head each one had.
Rife and perfect.

And I begin to fret, who'll remember
their beauty when I'm gone?

When the headstones fall to pieces and
the night of nights hide every trace?

And the black birds on the limb carry on
with no thought of the lovely faces hidden here.

Little gods

Flowers catch our eye
not with equal fervor of the bee

or bird whose longevity
is here entwined,

but watch how blossoms
excite our souls

with affirmations
of vitality.

Watch how we approach heads bowed
before the little gods,

happy and exalted, losing
our ability to speak.

We grasp kinship.
We too are waves, bundled

sinews turned to the sun not
knowing for how long or why.

Strange land

Coming home from up high

where I waded motionless

in the breeze blowing down

from volcanoes over bubbling

mud, a boiling lake

where I loved life so much I

worried every hour of losing it.

Now I am back in the land of

man-made things—

moss from still ponds and

twigs still stuck on my shoe

Home where throngs frenzied 

with goals clog the streets, 

their constant motion drugging 

the air

where every place I go

too many got there first

where I sleep pinched 

without sight though the moon 

shines here too big 

and white.

Intermission

Our cancer patient plans big trips now.
Africa. Europe, Puerto Rico.
Not knowing how much time is left,
she will fill her glass to its
tipping point.

She will keep moving,
open her weary eyes wider,
stick out her parched tongue more often
 (though the taste buds are toast).

Her finger tips seek every sensation.
Nostrils flared, she tips her head
to hear this earth like never before,

to make it stream through her wool sweater,
her bald head, to force every remaining hair
on her body to tingle.

She carries her new life
as a baby chick in her swollen hands,
never taking her eyes off it.

She will pour breath down her blistered throat,
gulping it whole
the way a boa swallows the fawn.

Remission is only
intermission, she explains.

The night before

Tonight a bitter, bitter, bitter smell
of old olive trees shading my ground.

Bitter the scent of last week's chow mein
strangles every room.

Bitter, bitter, bitter the wind chime
wheezing beyond the door.

Bitter bitter seems all
outside and in.

All flesh, all down, all spider skein.
All of it sour, hard to swallow.

This bitter night before the morning
when I learn she's cured.

Bitter acid pools the food, the sleep tonight.
This bitter body shaking

Like a bitter bloated flatfish dying
at the bottom of the pail.

Only days ago, fresh

These berries, only
days ago plucked,
now sprout
a polar fur.

Already
chemistry finds another
nest to lay its egg.

Life invades from every
opportunity of light, of
drop, of death.
Thirsty and temporary.

One of many
strange things
about this world.