Pungent Nights

Wildflowers cascade down Horse-Heaven Hill
like a showy mudslide, they pile up at the bottom,
become the same color, fragrances merge
to the pungency of ensilage, the tang of beer.

A gaggle of children run and tumble
down, pile up at the bottom,
in time they become the same color,
fragrances merge in the tang of beer.

The sun sets and the 'River of Stars' tumbles
across the sky like a galaxy of naïve
rushing to the end of innocence,
and the night has a pungent aroma.

Romance Ku

wren loves
crunching spiders –
nest chirps

~

two hawks' courtship dive
talon to talon –
gopher scurries

~

gopher collects grass
for the bed chamber –
hawk bides time

~

plum blossom competes
for busy pimps

~

three cranes display
over one nest

~

the sun never sees shadows
walk the moonlit garden –
never knows what happens

Don't Blink

I have a casual relation to death,
I make offhand references
to my eventual demise,
meeting the grim reaper,

I tempt the end of life on desert trails,
the end looks the other way
and I find a trickling spring,
a little shade, a place to rest my feet.

Death is never so scary as when it looks
straight in your face and doesn't blink,
a falcon that doesn't turn away,
a storm walking across the high desert

on lightening spikes, and this morning
a dark disease with a death grip,
a chest with a silent heart.
I lie still in bed, and stare back.