Tule Fog

Tule Fog

floating beyond

the windshield

just below

tule fog,

intruding thoughts

race into night

building rapid breath

into that old monster,

still caged,

still roaring.

This bonfire burnt

behind the speed of lights,

left nothing

but a silhouette

of fingers gripping

a dark wheel.

These gathering mists

veil empty space

where pulse, gentle days,

life still warm, spill

from your tiny cuts.

Seventeen

pictures of songs fell in my lap

from an old manila folder,

drifting fall leaves

fighting gravity,

scattered in pant folds,

across the pine floor.

in the corner of my eye

a small bird escapes summer

stares curiously from the maple rail

of my second-story bunk,

yellow wings stretching time,

blurring forgotten wrongs.

semaphore tail to balance present

on present against the final future.

evermore or nevermore?

an unlikely question from a songbird.

Motion Beyond the Edges of the Universe

rumor says

that motion beyond edges of the universe

calls attention and seeing

what can be seen

cannot be unseen

an ocean

of understanding to understand

understanding cannot be unknown

when understood

yet no final understanding

lives in those seas

a gesture made

moves faint airs

about fingertips

stirring grasses

in unknown fields

The Cemetary

 City high-rises loom like gravestones

against an August moon blasting radio tunes

off teeth of the Sierra Nevada.

Geek and Dork drive Eighty into San Francisco Bay

crossing bridges, waiting for the next quake

along the faults of saints.

Neither felt a river move until one night

a skylight fell during a long slide show

of mythic meteors.

It was love at first shake and ever since

they’ve been looking for repeats

in syndication.

Imagine the Worst

Imagine the worst

Now tell me

Your mind’s eye view

Famous photos

TV adverts

In Sad-eyed places

Little waifs

With brown skin

In shoe factories

Black and whites in

Rio favelas,

African Sahel

Ragged unwashed

Andean kids

Without a shoe

What about rumors

Of the Magic

Kingdom missing?

Or the hundreds

Whose last portraits

Grace non-fat milk?