when i was eighteen
i lost sensation
in my cheeks. it was only
years later, once i felt the
slightest tingling
return to that same skin
that i let myself mourn
its absence (easier to numb
with positivity and denial
than to recount
the beauty and
brokenness
that led to its loss).
“Dirt Clouds,” “Accentuating Florence” and “Saying Goodbye to Florence Is Filled with Mud”
At my picture window, I raise the blinds
On the graveyard side. And, it’s you, July,
Lovely ghost? Not changed much since you were ten.
That’s how old I was when Pap George sold me
To Seth Woodall. I was thin as a seam,
Fearless, too; Runaway? Not so bold, see?
“In the Key of Keystone,” “Lost & Found & Lost” and “Winter Wind”
It was all that jazz
it was the city — San Francisco
it was the venue — Keystone Korner
a former topless bar on Vallejo Street transformed
into a world class club its interior intimate its memory indelible
& all that jazz
“The Sherman, the Grant, The Eldest,” “Eyes in the Warehouse” and “Musket”
The General Sherman bounds 1,487m
all wood
***
Like a bird god lean and hard
Sherman surveys Atlanta
His face bewhiskered, pockmarked
his choice to end this here
“House at Night,” “My Life Map” and “Just Another Brunch”
Gold-flecked dust ignites in waves.
I kiss my desert skin.
The coyote’s song lulls me
before I count the sheep.
The doorknob will turn
before the lock’s clasp
“Rock Paper Pictures,” “Of Voices, Waters, and Fires” and “Samsara Serenade”
It’s called The Cave of Forgotten Dreams
this place where handprints
with broken finger
wave at squint-eyed scientists
where prehistoric rhino, too,
looks up and down
“Stiletto,” “Redeeming Time” and “Successive”
Stiletto drops like river
Runoff echo in the cave.
Once dawn’s cables bridge
The canyon, you, first
Diurnal venturer,
Step out to punish pavement;
“The Avatar” and “A Viper and a Chickadee”
You found malleable a woman of uncandled clay;
I suppose it was she who gave you the carver’s adze,
Saying, “I just want to be close to you” –
You smiled through the splinters in your gloss
And took lacquered fingers to the handle.
“For the Polar Bear at Joburg Zoo”
They’ve painted your tank blue so you forget
how your paws flung moonstone stars across the
Northern Lights, how your cubs, seal-small, clung to
falling spires of snow and scarred, songless ice,
“Enchanted One” and “On Loneliness”
How can two words capture the magic of such a creature?
How can a name hold the essence of anything? I wonder, cradling
huckleberries from the bush, how to express the way my hands
are left a misty purple,
“Kismet,” “Walking as Loren Eiseley” and “An Ominous Greeting”
We’ve had enough! We’re taking it back!
The earth once belonged to the docile and us—
the wild—but no more will you, the puffed-up,
two-legged man, raze our forests and our swamps,
no more spew your chemicals into our homes
or fell our forests and set our lairs ablaze,
“Death By Bleaching”
They tell me that I’m not dying.
That my limbs aren’t burning.
That my face isn’t as ashen as I make it out to be.
But what do they know –
the false prophets with their loose lips, tailored suits, and painted-up lies?
Elephant in the Room
these days the smiles are scripted
to induce the flow of joy
in hopes
they amplify an initial step
to overcome the inertia
of years of climate induced apathy
i still remember the days
when i did not have to remind myself
to smile or breathe deep
“Cold Salad,” “At Shore” and “Sightless”
In a cold winter thought
I grabbed the earth by its head of trees
and ripped upward to free the firmament
beneath.
No earthworms or other secrets.
Human figures entwined
in angered roots.
“A Walk on the Edge”
Let’s go to the beach today
It’s closed, I know, the Great Highway, the great expanse
But I know a way in-
I’m a scientist.
I’ll show them my credentials, say you’re my assistant
We’re here to study the shoreline, what’s left of it
“Up & Down Or Cutting Across Chess Boards Which Aren’t Best Metaphors, Hear Songs Of Our Earth While You Can” and “End As Beginning As…?”
Just as Technology
has shifted from
being a vertical —
organizationally
in a stack above or
below other usual
equal silos
“Amazon Burning,” “Slow Creep” and “So Long”
I will never see your secret spaces
listen to the bold songs of birds
or the screeches of primate tribes
in trees along slow muddy waters.
Nor will I spy the silhouette
of the silent jaguar’s shadow
“A Sestina for Turbulent Times”
Our kids march in the streets for Climate Change.
They’re chanting we are running out of time
disturbed by watching all the rising seas
from hurricanes, huge fires, torrential rains.
Their fears and tears give me a bit of hope
that our vast world will flourish when I’m gone.