Red Castles
An angry goat fronts
the entrance of the trail –
an unfamiliar gatekeeper.
Payment is an exchange
of glances, a thousand
yards to nowhere.
He steps behind an old
trustworthy cedar that
hasn’t moved in 500 years.
No man touches these
granite walls, only gods
and white-crowned sparrows.
I hear them chirping in
the canopy, and I pray for
them to guide me home.
An emerald sea runs up
along the trail, lined with
junipers and mountain ash.
I’m led to a scar in the
mountainside – thousands
of trees marred by fire.
Through the char I see
the expanse of tundra
and stop to write a few words.
The summit is within view
and the whistling of wind
is soothing white noise.
Snow falls in perfect crystals
in my hand and I begin to
fill my pockets with them.
There is only the moon now,
singing her Aphroditic melody
in the paleness of the night.
Falling
Blackness takes the sky.
There’s a burning in the distance—
it too will be overcome.
Such is the nature of these things,
passing of days like the breath of God.
Man obscures himself.
In the trickle of rain
I heed myself in a puddle,
a reflection ebbing among the droplets.
How I would speak with
who looks back at me.
His voice,
Sharp as a dark green thorn.
Reaching inward,
I am pierced by the ether.
Cold hands with wet, waxen fingers,
at any moment, pulling with the strength
of one close to death yet
clinging to life.
In the holy chasm,
I hear a voice
humming divinities.
I have always been here,
and never at all.
Grit
How long must I drive this hammer into this pin
before it breaks the Earth?
Does she not see my tent flapping in the wind
and cigarette ashes floating into my eyes?
I’ve been lame since that fall on Olympia years ago,
and this goddamned leg can fall off and become
one with the dirt for all I care.
The wind howls at my impatience,
and I wail back into her.
She cracks the pines and my stomach goes hollow.
I feel light.
Like I did when I was twenty-six,
and she told me she loved me.
Black clouds shoulder their way through the trees.
I drop my hammer and pins into nothingness,
find a seat against a spruce, and open my flask.