Be Free

the professor speaks

words entrained in 

serpent skin segments

dust in waiting

living water

long gone

through windows

sun patiently traces the

ancestral curvature of joy

on walls and hands

and waking dreams—

Be. Free.

lulu's gas pedal

lulu’s gas pedal is stuck to the floor,

melded, more like,

in kinetic fusion—

her tiny dog body is a

particle accelerator bottleneck through which the whole of

cosmic dogness passes each and every second,

a pulsing dog life in a ricochet of time

except when she sleeps

black hole tumbling inward

onto the warm laundry pile in God’s basement

simply gone, a moment’s peace

so short

Mine

No, thank you.

I’ve had enough

of gold and the

tunneling word,

mine.

If only we had

left the treasured hills

untouched

and fortunes

unmade,

had never

learned to

weigh a life

against what books

record,

rumors requiring polish

and a fearful spell

to shine,

no source of

anything.

To possess at all

is to shatter oneness

and free demons

to nest…

everywhere.

One

the granite heart of a mountain

still nursing liquid heat

deep within

is cousin to the infant sleeping,

leaving star life for a time

beneath them

a crystalline dream

in one act

never was

in one step i cross

the river called arkansas

a small matter to gather it whole

under the eaves of the world

ice age air still misting

september breath

where mountain tundra softens

stone gutters

old waters

new again

see, see

time never was

Wedding Day

for Issa

Paper is only paper, of course,

proof of nothing—

permission

prerequisite

prerogative—

ink is powerless to bless.

But hands clasped,

breath poised

on the lip of Yes! 

eyes finding mates again

in this new moment,

words weaving fresh fields of love cloth—

These hush the worlds.

These still the gods.