New-Year Ku

old year
ends on time
again

~

new year’s resolution
unicorn tracks
on beach sand

~

looking past
new year’s day
greener grass

~

new year
a time between
this and that

~

new year’s day
same feeding flock
as yesterday

~

new year’s
last bottle of wine
first morning after

~

new year
same old hermitage
same old hermit

I’m not from here

I was born in the middle of a humid night,
leave on a morning train and never return,
no time to set roots, to hear the music,
no time to belong. No roots here either.

I’m an outsider, a visitor, I don’t speak local,
and the ghosts of Proper Lake don’t speak to me.
In town there’s a commons behind the face,
the Eddy Creek story that doesn’t need

retelling, the train crossing Main Street
too fast, the air horn was all over town,
the Thanksgiving Day storm that took lives
too fast, and when New Orleans sinks

into the gulf I’ll have no hometown,
no native land, like the penguin
in the zoo after the Antarctic melts,
like a tree frog in a clear cut.

Archaic Ku

mistress combs
gray hair
past bedtime

~

cosmetics
new face on
old stone

~

winter’s mulled wine
ancient remedy
wears well

~

windswept dune
worn sand goes
back and forth

~

spring flood
river leaves
ancient channel

~

old room’s
dusty scent
life reduced

~

rebel statue
aged dispute
still warm

Stop My Heart

You want to be my lover?
Stretch out in front of me
like a sandstone canyon,
a study of form and fold

as twilight slow dances
over crease and crevice.
You want to be my lover?
Shriek the air with skin

tingling lightening,
blast the bark off my trunk,
tickle a spark to my core.
You want to be my lover?

Whisper the wind
through a wing of feathers,
that last rush of wind
before talons. My love

is the electric feather,
the canyon where I sleep.

Musdo

(way of the mouse)

release the inner mouse
it matters not where you click
the desktop is clean, the mind is settled
the body is aligned and tranquil

gather the mind to the center of the body
be present and aware of every movement
body, mind and mouse move in harmony
it’s easier to move the mouse than the heart

at the moment of click there is no thought, no idea
the click can be said to exist on the target before the cursor
click not only with the mouse but also with the mind
it’s none of your business where the mouse clicks

the desktop is a mirror of inner truth
let refection be the starting point of thinking

Ernie’s Place

Old Ernie was laid to his final rest
this morning under a boulder sized
to keep him still, and then the stories,
he quit tending bar in Fargo

to train for the Olympics,
studied Buddhism three years,
bought a nothing Idaho ranch
for a nature preserve, taught school,

opened a Mexican restaurant in Rome,
launched a ‘Nature Music’ radio station,
went to Congo for the logging,
and that’s where he tipped over.

Ernie had more moves than a chorus girl,
more changes than a weatherman,
but now he knows his place,
now he’s predictable.

Barnacles and Birds

Tara's voice travels the beach like rolling surf,
plods along the sand, pounds rocks,
pesters the skittering shorebirds. Receding waves
pull at my legs, leave salt in my clothes.

A kittiwake glides down the beach like a tourist
junk yard browsing, leg dangling,
looking past me. We turn to a pointless beach
and find a place to stretch and preen,

pull out the road map where we’ve been,
trace footfalls long ago washed
into the ocean. The surf dumps
in tide pools where a barnacle flicks his net

for tiny bits to drag inside a shell,
and waits for the next rolling surf.

Stormy Ku

winter storm
crosses the bar
harbor dances

~

Canadian front
door whistles
old tune

~

coyote moon
on new snow
shadows move

~

winter storm
the ferry landing
creaks and groans

~

drizzle clouds
leave in the night
crackling dawn

~

offshore storm
Red Phalarope
land at airport

~

thunder storm
drinking wine
in the dark

Felinity

I am smitten with a kitten,
bouncing paws hold needle claws.
I’ll retract when she’s a cat
with secret lives and hidden knives.

The Counter Girl at Oishi’s

Happy eyes greet
the opening door
with alluring formality,
demure as a plum blossom
and available

to satisfy desires,
slow lips are generous
with teases and teasers,
promoting the noodles
and a dream.

West End

Early pioneers wagon west
through Sand Gap, the earlies grow
a few crops, build a forever mill
at the river, fish a run

that’ll never dry up, settle
a blacksmith and tavern between the river
and Boy Scout Knob. The settlement grows
a not-much town, a hotel opens

next to the tavern, the knob gets
a touched-up name, and West End
is the dirt road by Sidney Creek
with one-rooms by the day.

Not-much gains weight
and fords the creek, crawls a railroad
around the ridge and puts a school
across the pasture. It bridges the river,

endangers the harbor and offends the ocean.
Not-much keeps stretching and shifting,
the blacksmith is gone, the mill is down
to one shift, the fishing is run down

to sport, but Sidney is still here,
it runs through a not-much park,
and the road called West End.

Joan’s Tawny Back

The San Juan flows like Joan’s tawny back,
natural light enwraps standing waves
and descends past thought, eddies coil
around dimples and swallow the black,
plunging rapids cover snaggy rock
in river dust and rainbow shards,
like peach blossoms on Joan’s tawny back.

Container Ku

seed head
on dry stem
prairie snow

~

Bottle Beach
sandpipers stream
in and out

~

Blacks Mountain
lumber camp
stowed in photograph

~

gray noggin
leaky container
for a memory

~

Benson Pond
two raccoons
feed at rim

~

marsh music
cacophony
one message

~

autumn moon
cold night
wears lonely

The Youngest Daughter

The youngest daughter prepared
turkey and squash for the family
while Coyote watched
from the shade of a juniper.

Her thoughts were of family
she didn't notice he put sticks
in the path to trip her
so he could snatch fallen morsels.

From a high cliff Raven watched.
Raven flew over the plateau
rising in the sky his eye captured
light from the sun

rising higher his feathers grew
large and black until
all was covered with his darkest shadow
and Coyote could not see food to steal

he only saw the youngest daughter
in the light of Raven's eye.

Snowflakes

No two poems are the same,
exotic crystalline structures
cast from a cloud’s gray terrace.
The exotics swirl around,

find a place to think a golden sunrise
over a vacant mudflat, a flight of teal
flashing green wing bars
in gathering ground fog. The exotics

drift through and one lands on a sleeve,
pauses and melts to a tear, and then another,
until there’s a mark,
a wet spot.

NEC Ku (0)

(Not Elsewhere Classified)

coyote hunts
fresh dinner
skunked

~

nature preserve
hang sign
watch progress

~

grim reaper
trims grass
cuts flowers

~

domestic
is wild
under contract

~

goat fights
with burro
vulture waits

~

green
autumn
white

~

political mask
paper
or plastic

Three-Leg Dog

This morning I have an omelet, hash browns
and coffee next to the ersatz wood stove
at the Tokeland Hotel, the two-lady
table is drinking pink bubbly in a wine glass,

one of the four olders send the plate back
to the kitchen, and a young brunette on a bench
plays guitar for the three-leg dog.
Over in the marina the old cannery

is missing the north wall, five-hundred
godwits rest on the floating dock, two crabbers
on a boat talk long and small,
six grebes catch brunch in the bay,

and a young brunette on a bench plays guitar
for the three-leg dog. Westport
has a traffic jam
in front of the Hawaiian Barbecue,

twenty-five rock sandpipers perch
on the pilings, a fish-catcher packs
his tackle and takes his kid home, and it’s cold
enough to make a three-leg dog shiver.

A Frog and a Pan of Water

Put a frog in a pan of water,
let him relax, slowly add heat.
The frog adapts and settles in,
he can forecast the present

but not the future, he can’t tell
what’s coming. Increase the heat
and the frog gets anxious,
tell him it’s a natural cycle.

Add more heat, the frog starts to worry,
tell him the scientists don’t agree
on pan warming, it’s not our fault,
it’s beyond our control. Increase the heat,

the frog says it’s never been this hot,
there’s never been so much steam,
old ways need change.
Tell him not to worry,

the solution is technology.
When the steam clears
cash out the carcass,
get a new frog, and a pan of water.