Driftwood

The rain hasn't started yet,
flickering neon down the street
lights up the bottom of the fog,
lights up the puddles on the sidewalk.

At Mahli's Hall the fast music ends,
a person of pleasant curves finds a window sill,
perches like a piece of seductive driftwood,
weasel eyes dance about

like flames on kindling.
I leave the driftwood behind
and follow the music out into the mizzle,
a cat retreats into the bushes,

the past stretches down the street
in front of me and yawns.
Two crows are on the street,
we each stand in our own pool of shadow

and pull on the tide of melancholy.
Flickering neon raindrops fall,
pleasant curves cross the sill
and walk through the puddles.

It's many-troubles day, the little spiders
on my eyelids keep me awake,
and the driftwood goes out with the tide.

Bookshelf

An idea is wrapped in words and laid to rest
on a page, borrowed thinking in a hardcover coffin,
a shelf is the cemetery, it sags under the weight.
A skirmish line of irregulars stands on the cemetery,

shoulder to shoulder like a row of tombstones,
pavers waiting to line a path of thought.
A small pile is on the table, it's a good place
to dump a body waiting interment, rest in peace.

Spirits of borrowed thinking hang around the cemetery,
roam the night and look for space in my empty thinker,
look for new relationships. Spirits drift
in the rumbling darkness and inhabit dreams,

the ones I can't quite recall in the morning
when the coffee plows out last nights wine.

One Short

Scarcely after sunrise, six jays
at the feeder make gluttony noises,
I put out one more peanut
for the jay that comes late,
he never shows up.

My best ideas come in the night
when I have imperfect memory,
or the middle of dinner
when I'm short on time.

A random meeting
does not a relationship make,
and the other way around,
a relationship is not random.

Normal-John has shingles,
not enough nails, too much roof,
a wind comes up,
rain changes all the smells.

Bottle Beach has too much tide
or too much beach,
and never enough shorebirds
for the falcon.

Karen-Two-Kids
puts out cheese and crackers,
I need one more cheese,
she needs a cracker.

I realize the ultimate answer
just before a moose
breaks through the trees
and changes the question.

And,
at the end of the kiss,
I need one more day.

Consent Ku

the garbage man
is a percussionist –
sleep comes and goes

~

at noon the fog lifts
over Moon Island –
the mountains are glorious

~

after seven years
the neighbor dog lets me pass –
old man's tired bark

~

old feelings trouble my thinker
a jug of wine lets me sleep

~

jays squabble at jays
over the sunflower seeds –
chickadees come and go

Sarah

Sarah suffers curiosity disorder,
she wants to know frogs, rust, mushrooms,
she wants to know autism
so she disengages, thinks herself

into detachment, talks to herself,
out loud at first, then she only thinks
about a world of rust colored frogs
sitting on mushrooms she wants to inhabit.

Sarah loses track, she looks to the spy
in the vacuum cleaner, stops looking to people,
she rides a smoky horse into the next room,
the horse doesn't know the way back.

In the chill black of dawn,
under the kindness of a rain shower,
Sarah makes her own parade,
connects with a crow troubled by Tourette's,

appreciates that speed doesn't make light,
she speaks in sharp rocks that draw blood.
Sarah suffers curiosity disorder,
a flower with edges.

Woods Ku

a short walk goes long –
the Big Woods
swallows sound

~

sixteen trees
float down the Wishkah –
woodcutters pause for beer

~

stagnant water
satisfies the Dismal Swamp –
earth and air

~

a Moon Island beer party
back in the trees –
the morning fog chills

~

a woodpecker on a high perch
claims a stand of old wood

~

there's a stand of trees
up behind the Wilson place –
Alice cries out twice

South-Valley

Bill McKenzie's double-great grandfather
told migrants to take this twisted way
to get from Trout to Orchard, and that made
a dirt road. One section is a gravel bed

but the rest is good only when it's frozen
rock hard, most of the time it's sucking mud,
or alkali powder that hangs in the August air.
The county spread the gravel up and down

the twisted to make it 'all-weather', which fixed
the sucking, but not the alkali dust.
The state paved the last 40 miles
when they tied in highway ninety-five,

then they put the new highway up north
where the pronghorn herd-up for migration,
the new strips of pavement and wire fence
cut the valley in half. Most people

on the twisted made a wrong turn,
would be happy with a flat spot to park
and an outhouse. The wrong-turns hear
engine noises, smells like burning hair,

they're too uneasy to think what it was like
for wagon drivers walking beside the smell
of hot horse, watching lean thighs
roll and sway, eating the dust.

Up ahead, in the cool between junipers,
McKenzie's girls are waiting.

Kurtz Cove

A boy waits on the beach, for a small fee
he'll tell about the Sandra Bea,
how a November storm comes up
on a high tide, the wind is blowing

out of the east and there's lightening everywhere,
she loses power and she's wrecked right here
by this piece of driftwood,
forty-five years later she starts to leak

oil so they spend two summers digging
out the hull, hauling off tons of sand,
she came in stern-first at midnight,
and there was a full moon.

I speculate it must have been terrifying
for the crew and passengers, the people on shore
were surely desperate and miserable,
the rescuers surely felt helpless.

No, he says, she was being towed to Westport
for repairs and the cable snapped,
there was no one on board.

For a small fee I sit on a piece of driftwood
where the Sandra Bea used to be
and watch loons dive in reflections on the cove.

Ocean Ku

breakers wash the sand
where ocean begins –
shorebirds skitter

~

the remnants of a storm
blow in off the ocean –
a rainbow of kites

~

a migrating flock
follows the surf line –
beach grass waves

~

breakers crash
against the jetty –
a spray of surfbirds

~

twenty-five pelicans
in a willow line –
reflections on the waves

~

the ocean ends
where fog begins –
thought horizon

The Campbell House

Families journey like creeks, winding a path
between the rocks and trees,
unlucky creeks pour into a rotting stinking swamp,
and rot themselves into a stink.

The old Campbell House at the edge of town
drives the Campbells nuts with the creaks,
drips, and flickers. They spend their fortune
on remodels, repairs, Prozac,

her body is found in the basement,
he lives with a guardian, the kids
drop out of school,
charges are pending.

The two Foster kids are born at the house,
they are disabled by the mold,
formaldehyde, shrieks in the night
nippy shadows in the basement.

Old Man Rawlings is already peculiar,
he stops the electricity so it won't leak
in the walls and come out at night,
he sits by a window, reads in the slant light.

The old Campbell House at the edge of town
takes one last victim when it burns to the ground.

Window Ku

a kitchen window opens –
the house cat
goes in and out

~

a break in the trees
reveals meadow flowers –
flycatcher's song

~

three grave stones
define a sequence –
a shovel does the geometry

~

an old photograph
on the table –
she's here and there

~

from the moonlit garden
gentle voices –
a window slides shut