Poems

The sun keeps it own time
Does not rush or dawdle
Across desultory city skies
Tawdry suburban skies
Dusty desert skies

Misses Pharaoh’s worship
Misses the ancient Greeks
And their golden chariots
Misses its own light
Reflected by a Goddess

That improbable canyon
A gouge in the landscape of the south end
Of Seattle, about a mile long,
Not as wide as a city block.
at it's center, an unnamed creek
Feeding into the Duwamish
River eventually,
Feeding me and Curtis and Donnie with
Trout that came from who knows where.
Fatty and fried on the stovetop.
Feeding us with blackberries and thimbleberries and
Oregon grapes my dad said were poison,
But we ate them anyway.

Don’t want to be clumsy
Or meaningless or unbalanced
Not a negative
Graceful, not inept
Absurd, not inane
Progressive, not off-kilter
Not defined by what is not
insane, insecure, indigestible
Become intimate, intense,
Inclusive, internal
And intelligent

If the boulder ends up as sand
Why not start with sand?
Going through all the laws
Of thermodynamics, inertia,
Dissipation, erosion
On our way to sand
There is no why
Why is the insanity of our species
Beating ourselves with the scourge
Of assuming reason
While the rain beats on the roof
Knowing it will win

I know how these stories end
All of them
The inciting incident is usually best
Some parts of the rising conflict
The second act is always too long
And then the inevitability of the third
Which leads to the end
A car chase, a wedding
A drawn-out fist fight or gun battle
A dog come home, a final showdown,
A family re-united
Then hugs and tears and kisses
And finality
I know how these stories end
They end with silence