90 Days

The Delta Night is Spangled Blue (excerpt)

When I got back, the band was wailing again and Red’s was packed. I kept my eyes on a man in a shiny purple dress shirt tucked haplessly into black slacks slung so low on his hips you could see he wasn’t wearing any underwear. He wore ragged black shoes and a long frayed white ponytail under a black fedora and was fiddling with a harmonica in his hand. At random intervals, he would mumble to himself, slip up to an open microphone, and blow riffs unfettered while the band kept rolling, either unaware or unconcerned by his ambush. After each run, with the crowd erupting in yelps and shouts and pats on the back, he’d saunter over to a corner with a lurching swagger to practice before his next approach like some southern Miles Davis or Coltrane, so enveloped in his sound and dying all over inside to prove himself to all who came to listen. On his last run, he blew for three minutes straight and sent the crowd into a frenzy. He came over to me, dapped me up, then wandered out of Red’s and into the milky night, never to be seen again. He wasn’t in the band, he may have never been apart of anything — The White Ghost of Clarksdale. I figured he disappeared into the cotton fields to practice his lines for another eternity.

Clarksdale, Mississippi. June 13, 2025.

Pacific

She bends, she bends,
     her morning
  eucalyptus wind
   ladles over bluffs—
     uncovers mystic blue
                          islands
               might be clouds
            lifted the dawn fog

She bends, she bends,
     she cups my eyes
  curving waves west
     and all the seaweed
        gets pulled into
   the undercurrent

She bends, she bends,
    she holds up
            prophecies
            and oil rigs
    She dances for them,
     she’ll sing for you

She bends, she bends,
     pelicans   seagulls
 blonde barefooted girls
      shimmy on down
             to her quiet side

She bends, she bends,
     she tells of her
        bottomless truth
  in eight second intervals

She bends, she bends,
    she greets Shastas
      and moonbeam,
  she learns of my sorrow
     and gives me Buddha

She bends, she bends,
    she melts
               into one—
        the horizon
     cannot be placed

She bends, she bends,
    smokyeye and dogjoys
   race eclipses
        of her curves

She bends, she bends,
   she’ll speak
       as clear for him
     as the waters
             who are her

She bends, she bends,
     she’ll swallow the sun
                Her fate is leaking
                   the silent dawn
            Our eyes are pinched—
    tide coming in
   on us both

She bends, she bends,
     silverstudded
         she stragglenot
    Her rippling waves,
      her driftwood meets
          the beach

She bends, she bends,
      she knits the coastline
    Her Little Dipper
         goes flailing
              into the grey

She bends, she bends,
  she drags the sands
          Her hands are Zen
      on my doorstep,
             her lips are salt
          for my making

She bends, she bends,
      she molds me
                   like clay—
              I sit here and wait,
       I watch her change

She bends, she bends,
     the skies 
        will break
  They were always
     going to
         A new blue,
               lilac-eyed
            and clear
                appears

She bends, she bends,
     yes, she’s blue again
  Turquoise undercurrent
          rustles rocks
              belted ashore—
     I no longer see grain
   from where my eyes lay

   See the sea,
      she doesn’t end
She bends, she bends,
       and pulls away

Santa Barbara, California. July 21, 2025.

Redwoods

Redwoods, do you hold
all truths, even the bitter ones
behind your bark? do you hear
the cries?
America is weeping
with her hands clasped to the sky.
I’ve looked behind the veil—
I’ve seen a bonerattling hunger
I’ve seen us poisoned on the trail
I’ve seen the end as an ashy cross
slobbered on our foreheads
and bemarked by the death
of birdsong
And by now I’ve seen the sea,
she’s eating at the ribs of America!
the oilfields of Texas are wailing!
Sweat is pouring off the brow
of horrors we were never meant
to see— 50 stars are falling from
the flag, they’ll slip into night
and disappear forever.
When we offer up our freedom
from outstretched open palms,
whose God will we blame?
Then be as it may
the falling into line,
the signs of the cross—
they make crucifixes of your flesh
and won’t believe in reincarnation.
Redwoods, I’m off my head—
I’ve crossed the Mississippi
I’ve suffered the haunted desert
I’ve conquered the Great Divide
I’ve escaped to the coast
6,000 miles I’ve come
just to hear the way the Pacific
speaks.
And I’ve heard her, and I’ve grown
tired, and I’m still the same as I
ever was.
No answer I’ve been
able to find.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park. August 18, 2025.

Dead summers

This is sacred time. August 5. land is as swollen as a blood tick. today I swam & saw Appalachian harvest looming the treeline above. today I’m 22. today I think of last summer. of the clarity I no longer know. of Steinbeck’s grave. Bob Weir’s last dance. juke joints in the Delta abyss. thunderstorms crackling with the voice of God himself. the filthy heat of Texas. $2.39/gallon & 110 degrees. lowriders. sandlot baseball. sleeping in the silver eye of the Rockies. clawing for sanity in Utah. the Sedona doldrums. ghosts in Vegas. the haunted desert. racing to the Pacific. marveling her emerald sea. her indescribable blue. her eucalyptus dawn. Haight Street at 3am. clouddance over Twin Peaks. El Cap the Monk. making love under meteor showers. midnight in the Valley. two dollar wine. thumbing a ride on US-1. let it take me home. naked mornings under wool poncho & redwood trees. Oregon. 90 days on the road. 40 on the Pacific. days I sweated through deliriously & wrung out onto the tattered pavement. in September I pointed my nose east & ran back home. so? Augusts come & go. summers die. memories stay. que sera sera. tomorrow I’m 23. rain in the forecast. I’m home chewing on bad habits. walking into the halflife. the bottomless pit. the chief sawyer called for rest so I listened. now I’m stuck in the mud. loverless. weightless. watching the redtailed hawks hang over my Susquehanna. I gotta leave. I gotta go cowboy out west awhile. but nevermind that now. this is sacred time. August 5. in the place where the veil thins. everything is leaning forward. knowing what comes next will be… like it’s all about to burst wide open… do you feel it?

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. August 5, 2026.