No Sign

About five miles down is Barney Road,
there's no sign or anything, take Barney
over to Holgate Ridge, turn where the ranch
used to be, go east from there to Trout,

you can't miss it. I follow directions
I don't understand down a too-long dirt road
to a place I don't know, and I can't miss it.
It's like high school, or a school after that,

or a job I don't understand, I go along,
get somewhere, I can't miss it.
It's like Sharon taking me to bed,
a place I don't know, there's no sign

or anything, I go along,
get somewhere, I can't miss it.

Night Bugs

Just before the big bang I'm having a beer
with my buddies. We're crowded in real close,
like hockey night at the tavern, it's getting hot
and we're crammed in, nobody can move.

Finally there's a flash-bang and we rush into the street
and the clear night, it's refreshing to be out
of the stuffiness, out where we can brush off
the dust, stretch and breathe, watch the neon

flicker and flare. Some of the girls start a line
dance and weave from one street light to the next,
three guys hang on to each other
and spin in circles. I go the other way,

alone into the empty sky, neon fades
in the distance behind me, night bugs
fly around. I haven't seen my buddies in years,
we keep getting farther apart.

Twilight Ku

across the lake
a breeze blows
twilight into night

~

soft rain at dusk
then street lights
smudge the fog

~

daytime shadows
wait under a tree –
stretch into the night

~

sky dims –
the marsh puts
a good noise on

Long Slow Scratch

There's a new bull in the pasture,
he has good form, and a fine voice
when he bellows. A flock of small birds
flies in, the wind whisking their feathers,

they are in a great rush to get here,
and they will leave in a rush,
but for now they are content
to pick and hop and squawk.

The water hole dried up months ago,
every night there's a storm
with high wind, lightening and snow,
and a fine voice when he bellows.

The scrub pine is in a permanent lean
with the wind, the new bull uses them
to scratch his neck, a long slow scratch
up behind the ears.

Speedience

I'm tangled in researchism, they're going to put things
in us to keep track of wrinkly thinking.
I ask, "Who are the stinking pigeons in charge
of these things?" They look worried and say,

"How much do you know?" It's the only thing
that gets me out there and free today,
and that's why I vote whenever I can,
I register in five states, the only problem

is keeping the ID's straight, I keep notes,
and I never show the license I drive on,
not to the police when they stop me
for researching, not to the wrinkly woman

at the noodle shop. I'm researching the culture
that makes war and also makes a piano,
language that rhymes, eye glasses, canned food,
tea towels, songs about farewell, and mustache wax.

It's wrinkly thinking, but birds still come to the feeder
on a foggy morning, and speedience is all about timing.

Divides

Even a broken window separates the kitchen
from the garden as sharply as my eye
separates me from surfbirds on a breakwater,
even when I take off my glasses
and the surfbirds are gray smudges on black.

An old photograph is a divide
without edges, out of focus, stained
and faded. On the other side
of the divide is a corral,
great-grandfather J D

and his friend Ray,
Ray is the tall one with a hat.
Betty runs down the beach to watch the gray
smudges spin into the air and settle down
on the back side of black.

My stained and faded memory is a photograph
of a life out of focus.
A broken window in the sand
separates most of Betty.

E-mail to Alicia

I'm tired of the computer game Bzern,
that's the one where you keep six moig
in the air, build a pado and herd
the broole, while you avoid getting goached

by an oyck, it's a pointless fantasy.
I want something more real world,
like Triary, where you separate
conjoined triplets in a hurricane,

or an earthquake, or a nurses strike.
Although I get depressed every time
Alicia dies, she's my favorite,
not that we have a special relationship

or anything, but she's so caring,
her songs reach the center of my heart,
and she's the only one with any real
emotions. I sent her an email.

Churn

The Sand River, a high high-tide,
and day-old storm residue
come together at the harbor mouth
like an awkward family-gathering

and churn the ocean into chaotic waves
and froth, breakers roar in
straight over the bar, half the jetty
is submerged. Pelagic cormorants

on the few high spots stare
at the churn and wait out the chaos.
There’s something in the water,
the river won’t stop pushing,

the residue gets tired and goes to sleep,
and the tide leaves in a temper.

Black Bellied Plover

A despondent moon finds no one
in the garden looking at peach blossoms,
has nothing on a plover's mournful call

drifting across a mudflat under freezing fog,
incoming tide fills in shadows
around a line of rotted pilings.

High Water

The grocery heads nod
and word gets around.
Twelve is blocked,

Malone is washed out,
but the back way
to Astoria is open.

Farms on Brady Flats
are flooded,
but that happens every year.

Swans are wintering
on the golf course,
geese use Markley's pasture,

shorebirds are on the loop road,
ducks are everywhere,
word gets around.

Clammer

Soft-gray skies blend into green-gray
tide ebbing from dark-gray mud.
A charcoal-gray clammer, with mud boots
and a plastic bucket, probes the dark-gray

for razors like a surgeon locating a tumor,
or the bullet that pays the bills. Nurses squawk
a cadence of progress, clinking tools, like gulls
hunting litter. The clammer carries

a heavy bucket to the Tidewater
and leaves razors in a tank
behind the front door where a suit
stalks a sit-down dinner with white wine,

and the clammer gets a beer at Becky's.

Tanning Bed

Naked man flees from flaming tanning bed in Regina. CBC news headline.


In a room at the back of the pizza parlor
the coffin's second cousin quietly endures
reeking lotions, naked skin,
dragon breath, rotten farts

and rank feet until it self destructs
in physiological breakdown.
With an eruption of burning emotion
the second cousin strikes out

in a call for help, a call
for rehab, a call for respect.

Slow Ku

a stream wanders
through the pasture
looking for a duck

~

a cup of tea
in the kitchen
is getting cold

~

a large tree
drifts in and out
the fog

~

yawn-stretch –
the spreading cat
switches windows

~

in the garden
a moon sliver
listens to Haydn