Mantis 1

Why are cars insects?

      No one has said.

Our frame of reference

      So limited

We look at wings

      On the windshield 

Grooving to an Allman guitar

      As some mechanical

Construction, something children

      Could find a pattern for,

Instead of what it is,

      What exists outside our world

In the cozy dirt

       Where the impossible,

Because invisible,

       Seems easy.

We suck all their sugar away

       But they love

Like we would

       So it's OK,

No one is here anyway,

       The mirror is only a light

And we live like them

       In the shadow

Jumping from reed to reed 

       Through unpredictable breeze

By way of foraging

       As they, they

Watch from above

       And below

On their idols

       Because innocent.

They hover over.

       That's how they fly,

Aware of all life

       As we see nothing.

Their subtle hum is all 

      The subtle hums,

Transparent wings and the palms

      Are one loving murmur.

They are the Gods because 

      The humans won't be.

They control the world, you know,

      Those buzzing invisibles.

Landscape

Ah, life! --

         into the dumpster.

They lived too well,

                    these vines,

      for death

            was everywhere,

The barely alive

      and the vicious kind,

          white, with jagged

                           wings,

Too much death, in fact, 

                      to notice

Where the spirit

         has actually left

    the greyed-out branch

            or papery nest.

The absent no longer

         concerns us,

                  it has done

                  the dying

       that is our chief

                        interest

As we tactically strike

           new infestation 

And relocate civilians 

                  to the trees,

Trying to blur the lines

       between what has

  some price to pay

           and what is free.

Signs of Autumn

1.

A harvest of prickly pears

Gathered like grapes,

Inflamed, fire orange,

Spewing red juice

For doves to forage

But the cactus dying

Has more to say

About the curl of love enduring

And what's left of skin exposed,

The sun-filled crown of one last flower

Like a candle along the plateau.

2.

Blue eucalyptus leaves

Are weighed down by silver,

Dead red leaves below,

Astringent needles,

The sway of distant boughs.

These trees hold the white light

In a living quiet,

Pocked and hammocked by webs

They offer labyrinthine stories

Of joys and sorrows, love and war,

How the purity of birth festered into beauty.

3.

Swamp grass with its final psalm

Of wide-quilled branch

And giant stem

Bows all its blades

In harmonious rows.

The sun hits the cheap grass,

Stalks buckle under 

Ores of seed.

Spider grass pounces

When the wind overwhelms it;

Uphold it must elegance.

Flash, or Requiem for a Beardie

She came to give love for awhile.

The child's attention turns.

Menageries become human.

She lived her life in the sun

And taught us what might lie beyond.

Now she scampers in the red Gibson Desert

Free of any tie

As we guard her memory.

After the Exchange of Worms

Coyotes ate the neighbors cat.

Nothing left but a lucky paw.

We helped them make a photo book

And dug 54 potatoes at dusk,

Red and smooth and fat, with our fingers

From a planter box where crabgrass was

Last year.

The ways of life and death are mysterious

But that's hardly an excuse 

To close the door on immortality,

Because something might get loose.

Vigil

No chance for grace

     With pets in the yard

That slip through every crevasse

     At any turned gaze.

They eat flowers too,

     But not calla lilies,

Turned into the ladies

     Who grew them.

The Trees

Gravity … enlightenment … immortality …

We’ve received so few secrets 

With our butts to the soil,

Where the nets of neural roots

Command a forest

Taller and more magnanimous than we are.

Most of the time my brain is in the wind;

I watch the leaves dance and make believe 

They could be mine. What I could do.

But even the stumps are kept alive with sugar

For the wisdom they remember;

Where, amid the antidotes, climate shifts

And most harmonious modes of order,

There is not one thought of the need

To forgive.

The Geese

A line of them honk like a saxophone choir,

Patrolling the ripple zen flow

Until the mallards are almost as distressed

As the geese, who anxiously sway

To another half-imagined dream,

Animated always by a black bile, 

Ever eager to lower an elongated beak 

Against the easiest trajectory. But most often 

The attack is against their own kind, 

Tongue extended at the rope end of the neck,

Wings spread like a proclamation from the king, 

To rage away something that can’t be seen, 

So deep is the animosity. They even shake

As they pick fleas, like they're not being treated

In the way their position demands, they,

The interlopers, wholly inappropriate 

To this climate, this flap of land. They populate

The hillsides, crouching, striding, flying

With the same restless critical eye

That finds the place lacking. Whatever comes

Out of their sporadic actions is hard to tell.

There's some satisfaction with the way they've held

Themselves against all comers, as if by scoffing alone

The corrupted mud could enter heaven. 

Vers

What says poem more than an earthworm?
In the darkness it holds such dominion,
As it breaks every fiber of being down
Without a sound, turns soil black for growing. 

Yet in the light, away from the dirt,
It is too lithe, too uncertain,
Sending itself out like a shoot to oblivion,
In a blind probe for more ambrosial waste.

What we don’t need and can’t use collects
By the side of the stove. We scrape it away
By moonlight before we go to sleep
In the backyard heap, where there’s always room

To churn into earth what we cannot consume,
The shells we’ve broken, the strained grounds
And overripe fruits, the life gave that we turned
Away, that soon won't seem to have existed at all.

Incident Above the Canna

The moth moves beyond
     Human comprehension
But the cat's eyes follow,
     Know precisely when to strike.

The lizard spots a bug
     We don't even know exists
And pulls it down with a timing
     That can only be described as divine.

It goes on like this.
     The polarity of breeze
Ionizes the trees, and the lemons
     Expand infinitesimally.

All miracles.
     But then a rickety
Single-engine prop sputters by,
     An old Cessna 150B,

And the panic is palpable,
     The jungle retreats
In an instant to become, for a moment,
     Backyard.

A Note on Advances Behind the Blind

The cat isn't cluttered by the new birdsong,
Doesn't dig for the sake of the hole,

Is content where we gnaw with longing,
Though it twitches at gold we can't know.

All our thinking has built a haze
Between what is and what might be;

We call it false, the imagination,
What is yawningly received

As the extension of its being:
The wasp, the crow, the gnome.

The lizards move like sunlight one poses for the kind photographer

Observation

With enough light on the leaves
They are no longer leaves.

The Songs of Avila

The sea must go somewhere;
It snarls in these caves
Blackened by its foam —
All that's left of a reaction.

The sound of water on rock
Is not the voice of the sea
Nor the mouth of the stone,
But it will have to do —

Wasted violence turned back and smoothed
Must be the answer to every question.

Eclipse at Aptos

A coastline of driftwood
Skeleton stacked
As if to support
The pier that's collapsed

Where the fish still believe
In marionette poles
And the pigeons still pray
At lovers' bare toes

But the pelicans roost
Past vanity's end
On a haunted guano island
Built from broken pilings
Where the slight return of
Light begins

Rooster 3

Papa Wembe
brought light to the space without others,
who'd already taken the zero percentage of you.
It's a small step from killing a mosquito
to eating a cheeseburger;
the planet that provides becomes your own,
to collect darkness like rainwater
as the sunlight slides away.

The Two Tomato Plants

The two tomato plants in the yard
Despite seemingly insurmountable distances
Find each other
And make love.

Invasion

The lake vanished.
The earth did not apologize,
But the horses follow us along the foothills;
The 20-carrot jewels left to our broken spirits
Are more priceless than the golden grass to them.
The cows don’t buy it; they stare as we walk by,
And dozens run when we get within 20 yards.
They know who we are: the only white people in the bar
And can’t pull fast enough away.
The grass they eat attacks our feet
As we follow an elk over waving hills
Of yellow, green and red, feathered with lupine,
Familiar datura and strange iron thistle blooming.
The rockface monoliths pocked with lichen
Seem to speak like shamans, or maybe they’re resting;
A day traipsing will not give up the secrets of Tehachapi Pass.
Squirrel, sheep, donkey, deer stare warily, no succor
For trespassers—our flag, our house, our land
Is no good here. Even the condor, wearing shaman’s fur,
Lifts off to spiral in the thermals.

Later, when the moon shines like pearls along the Grapevine,
The elk go swimming in the pond, trumpeting freedom songs.

The Osprey in the Bare Tree

The osprey in the bare tree sees:
Crabs perambulate to keep the world
In front of their testing claws;
Insects that use every joint and leg
To circumnavigate quivering leaves;
Steel-eyed rabbits glisten in camouflage
Waiting for cover of walking humans to move;
Schools of fish in furious slalom run
Silver scale shine in the sun...

It is enough, this choice, to make a bird
Feel humble, to gather its wings
In will and prayer
For the holiness of being worthy.

As the Water Moves In

As the water moves in
Fish race over canyons
On tracks that spontaneously appear

From an intelligence like ripples and bubbles.