Poems Pick the Locks People Make

There are no surveillance cameras here

On the black cliffs above the mesa, yet,

Although tourists sometimes report parked cars

To the park rangers for them to inspect.

I know this because I’ve been reported

Before, as suspicious, and I’ve been checked.

A little ways off the road, a few steps,

About how far my legs will let me get,

The basalt cobbles and boulders arrive

At the spot where lava stopped and then slept

For tens of thousands of years, long before

Anyone sat and savored its prospect.

Even in its summer heat, in this drought,

The mesa remains green, its sandstone red,

The high sky blue and utterly cloudless

Out to the next lava cliff in the west,

Behind which, from this perspective, sun sets

And winks—no surveillance cameras yet.

It Goes

I can understand.

I can acknowledge.

I can still refuse

To accept what I know,

What I at least suspect.

It’s not the loss I loathe,

That is, not the emptiness

I know I can never know—

It’s the gift of everything,

Moss, body, sun, and dust—

The quiet passage, stone

Bench with views to heavens—

Given me freely,

That has to take me

With it as it goes.

Find It

Effort everywhere, except the air

In which each effort flourishes.

If you are comfortable, if you are

Not sick, not hungry, not in pain,

Or not in too much pain, at least,

Why not declare yourself content?

Something will make you move soon

Enough. Someone will tell you

You should be making more of an effort.

But look at how this shadow curls,

The empty arm of an iron bird feeder

That doesn’t feed these summer birds.

It draws its slow calligraphy and fades

From the white pillar. I find it moving.

Fire Works for Sunlight

The light appears to move along the wall.

This is a matter of material perspective.

Place yourself. Warm breeze in your eyes.

It is morning in this aspect of America.

A wind chime tinkles a few lawns down.

At least three species of birds are singing.

The item in your hands informs you

That last night there were dire speeches,

And you know there will be more tonight.

Dandelions dot the lawn. The mourning

Doves’ throaty greetings mix with singing.

Have you noticed day is not what we say?

As the Reader Moves to Link the Parts

Afternoon is a lover,

Afternoon the demigod,

Empty, sun-wrapped afternoon

Of the glaring midsummer,

When light draws out scent from rocks,

From boredom that ends too soon,

When expectations hover

For changes against the odds.

Tonight, we’ll darken our moon.

The Dusty Molecular Cloud

I want to be honest,
And I want to be dark

As the shadowed angels
Who keep watch, patiently.

There’s too much light in me.
I like the lights too well,

The feathered moon, the stars,
Fiery day, pearly night.

I have a happy heart,
Easily contented.

I sit in a courtyard
And glow, too placidly.

I want to be honest
About the dark. I want

To have pronounced the names
Of night’s shapes, correctly.

Xuanhu

In my cellar of black wings,
All the little birds who died

In my awareness, in ways
That came to my attention,

Scruffy-headed, beady-eyed,
Lend their feathers to the ghosts

Who grow giant remiges
And rustle, shadow angels,

Overcrowded in the foxed
And mildewed books of the mind.

It’s not the end of a life,
Large or small, that matters most,

It’s that lives end, end at all,
The ending of all living

That keeps life going, that sings
Sweetly in the morning light,

Flying toward a clear sky,
Shining and airless by night.