Prayer Beads

The snow on the ground

is crusted and hard.

The deer mouse leaves

no track on the

fossilized remains of

winter in retreat.

It is spring,

and I move

along a dark archipelago

of emerging earth,

floating islands 

in a white sea,

strung together

like prayer beads

in praise of fire and 

the returning sun.

Ice melts.

Sky blue deepens.

The wheel turns and

then seed factories

hire back the local spirits

furloughed in the

depths of December.

I step carefully

to protect the hope

pushing upward

on my feet.

listening to a basketball game

when a basketball sneaker

stops suddenly on the

polished and painted floor

it makes the sound

a marmot uses on

mountain tundra

to warn his children:

i am near

close your eyes when fans

drum their feet on bleachers

in the tense moment

before a free throw

and you’ll hear the waterfall

i found in an autumn mist

where a glacial lake decided for once

to fly to the sea

a basketball passing through net,

a servant of gravity

and collective hope,

sounds like a single flake of wind

snatched from a summer storm

in ponderosa pines

and stretched between two red pins

behind glass at the museum

the sound of curses
raining on opponents and refs
like hailstones...that i've never heard
in the woods

Chasing a Word

Van Gogh painted haystacks. And sunflowers.

Another painter – I can’t recall his name –

Gave us portrait upon portrait of

The same woman. He knew the

Countryside where her breast

Swept gently upward and then descended

Toward heaven on the long highway

Of her arm. Still, there was

Mystery.

I know a word that sits each morning

In the leafless top of an old tree

Outside my window. I chart the

Shifting shadows on its face as the

Rising sun moves from solstice to solstice.

In moonlight, its wings glisten like a

Newborn lamb in the halo of a shepherd’s lamp

When breath leaves luminous tracks

In the air.

In the woods, I keep a discreet distance to hear this word

Speak itself to snake skins and mouse burrows and

Tufts of rabbit fur caught in sagebrush.

My journal fills with awkward translations: the bowed

Backs of willows paying homage to snow; Venus near

The pink horizon of a winter sunrise; the

Passion play performed in my daughter’s eyes

When a barefoot porcupine crosses

Our path.                                                                 

Occasionally, at my desk, when I am quiet and

Looking the other way, I catch this

Word among others on the page,

Like a chickadee knocking on pine cones, and I

Hold my breath. I want to see deeply, to know.

But the sound of my longing always stirs

The branches, and the word flies from the

Corner of my eye, and, like magic,

Is gone again.

Arrested Motion

I had come to watch silver minnows

darting and defying winter

in a backwater channel of the creek

where ice never forms,

where algae is an evergreen too,

living beyond its means

on geothermal credit, just enough

to keep its head above freezing

and the minnows in business

year round.

I was leaning and looking

from the shore of an island rising

between the ice capped creek

to the north and this southward ribbon

of unseasonal spring,

when a dissonant glint of chrome

flashed from the opposite bank

under a thatched roof of willow and snow,

where only frozen mud should be.

After my eyes adjusted

to shapes and lines foreign to

the water-formed world

I found it in the shadows—

the vintage handle of a car door, no—

the rusted door too,

or, wait—a whole car

headed east in arrested motion

underground, mostly.

I could almost see a skeleton’s elbow

resting out the window on a summer evening,

his wrist bending outward to flick the ash

from a glowing Marlboro. I could

almost hear the AM radio dial

spinning in his woman's fingers, 

searching for new stations

in the far night,

out where thermal plumes

of redemption are hot enough to 
unfreeze time. 

Unborn Dreams

Coyote song calls the quarter moon

And draws it over the rumpled edge

Of my life, out where the pines shelter

Unborn dreams, each speaking another’s name

Until they all glow bright

In reflected hope.

This mountain stream was, a moment ago,

Made of stuff the color of moonlight. Fish

Hear my steps on the ice and rush away to

Tell others that the prophecies are true:

Drums proclaim a thaw

If we will believe.

a very good deal

my first car

was a wheeled

battleship,

a forest green

armament against nature,

ironic, I know,

but aptly named

the Plymouth Fury,

because it truly was

an upholstered

metallic condensate

of my furious

oath of allegiance

to Manifest Destiny, my

foot-to-the-floor

white knuckle

blink-and-you’ll-miss-it

race to be

somebody,

uphill 

in every direction,

devil take the daydreamers

when I finally, finally

traded in the beast

I could hear the dealers

in tight shoes

and neckties

snigger behind my back,

and one or two of them

sighed with pity—

it’s not every day

that a perfect

ten out of ten

sucker walks through

your door

and offers up a

precision machine,

fine tuned to the future,

in exchange for…

well, nothing

and yet

let this soft smile

be my testimonial

and proof of

customer satisfaction

in a very, very good deal—

because many miles later

this walking stick

I acquired that day,

which accelerated off the lot

in sync with the solstice

and has pointed faithfully

to the center of the earth

in all weather since then,

this walking stick

still parts the waters,

and reveals hidden trails

in every direction