The Moth Goes Around

With new glasses I see the cobwebs
in my cabin, dust I only smelled
before, a moth flittering to dark places
in the printer, curious messages

crawling across the television screen.
Knowing evolutionary biology humbles
the path leading here, astronomical
physics troublizes the road ahead,

today's an egg learning about scrambled,
sunny-side-up, three-chili omelet.
Galileo puts two lenses together
to better see the River of Stars,

he puts away the glass but his thinker
never forgets the proposition,
knowledge that shoves orbits
out of round. I sit in the rocker

with my eyes closed and my thinker
remembers the moth going around the cabin.
The egg takes off its glasses, but it never forgets
which part of the chicken it comes from.

Islands

My past is an ocean, some parts stormy,
some calm, but mostly it's all the same
texture, it all looks the same,
except for the memory islands

poking up through the waves,
they anchor my thinking.
Between islands I find empty space
in the ocean, there used to be a memory

here, a name, a face, a place
of shared events, it's eroded away forever.
As I get older island hopping
takes ever less time.

Thinking Ku

an owl on a fence post
looks into my center –
nothing moves

~

an ice thin
covers the puddle
of turbid water

~

sunlight splashes
Sylvia Lake trail –
three girls on bicycles

~

the sun never sees
the scuff of snow
between trees

~

blue moss
on the garden wall –
water drips

~

sky's reflection
swims on a pond –
fish in the clouds

The Tribe

I live in a state of sad affairs,
the Governor is photographed
with a high school basketball player
and she isn't even drunk,
the Fish and Wildlife Director

is caught with a gill net
and there's no bribe,
the Highway Patrol has a program
to accept bribes, we know these guys.

At the Bent Fork
the regulars come in early,
the old guys, nine coffees,
two pancakes, three butter-horns,
an orange juice, six scrambled,
hash browns, can we get a refill over here?

A young woman walks in,
she's under more surveillance
than a strip club, she's out of place
as a birdwatcher with a white hat,
and she doesn't look like us.

She has a smile that says
I'm not from here, please be nice,
if she comes back tomorrow
she'll be one of the regulars,
one of the sad affairs.

Wind Surfing

A spring squall comes off the ocean
like a three-year old with a temper,
surf's up, and evergreen boughs dance
with a gust of wind.

Birds at the feeder flush up
and catch a dancing branch
for a belly churning carnival ride.

Wind-waves calm, the boughs settle down,
birds flitter back to the feeder perch
until the next breaker crashes in,
and the feeder birds go out on a limb.

Learning

Thinker Steve goes back east of the mountains,
to Denver, and walks across the parking lot
to a classroom, a lecture hall,
a coffee shop, util it's time to leave.

He comes back to where the ground is uneven,
the hot air is a blunt weapon,
the scent is a mule named Barney.
The education did me some good, he says,
but the earth did me some better.

Pistol Jimmy gets in a brawl
behind the Buckhorn Tavern,
it doesn't end well.
Thinker Steve comes to the hospital
to visit the results. The air is bad

in here, says Steve, I can smell the plastic
parts, the glue, the industrial cleaner,
the people in here are going to get sick.
The nurse says I'm not feeling too good

myself. Thinker Steve grabs the nurse
and goes back to where the ground is uneven.
Pistol Jimmy says he's learned
enough about doctoring, it's time to leave.

Back at the Buckhorn
Bill Martin says let that be a lesson,
Pistol Jimmy doesn't take to lecturing,
it doesn't end well.

Rough Edges

I came by that dusty petrified wood
on a desert ridge west of Fry
Canyon, we were resting on a ledge
in the sun, listening to a rock

wren, deep in the realm of thought.
I brought dusty home and cleaned
the dried mud off us both,
now he rests on the table

and I'm in the old wooden chair.
We are long past our prime,
my dusty friend, we have rough
edges, cracks and knot holes,

we also have a glass of wine
to rinse clear the mind.

Garbage Truck

The early morning sun is starting to burn
a hole in the clouds over Porter Ridge.
Down the block a garbage truck
comes around the corner with a growling.

It spots me standing back on the porch.
Like a coyote it stops at each garbage can,
tips it over and dumps the rubbish
that a family shed like a cat sheds hair.

Coyote warily draws near the carport,
he fixes on a clanking dumster
with a broken wheel, coyote gulps
and swallows with a snarl.

This is not a reticent coyote
slipping through tules at a marsh's edge
on a frosted November morning,
this howling coyote clatters and bangs

around the corner to obsess
on the next street's shedding.

Part of the Dark

Poetry's lover strolls to the end of town,
then circles back to the alley behind Willie's Tavern
where the guys are getting loose.
Willie's mouser is under the stair

getting bug revenge, Jimmy the Lip and Karen
look over a worn map of shallow thoughts,
Karen empties her pockets into the trash bin
to simplify her life, she simplifies her pockets.

The gang whoops it up in the tavern,
night sounds sneak out like incense,
Jimmy and the mouser come loose from time
and dance across the alley,
it's their turn to have the right of way.

Weeds grow in the pavement's cracks,
not aware their offspring will also be weeds.
Willie turns off the light, locks the door
and becomes part of the dark.

Intersection Ku

a fork in the road –
in the midst
wildflowers

~

behind Moon Island –
the flood tide
runs into itself

~

a tiger beetle
stops buzzing –
scissor-tailed flycatcher

~

traffic slows
at the intersection –
spilled birdseed

~

under the tree
fallen apples ferment –
snoozing coyote