Selected poems

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, CA.
July 21, 2025.

Elk calf

O! to be an elk calf,
docile-eyed & open-eared
in Sunday morning fog,
soft belly collapsed
over wet fern,
grazing blackberry fields
(invasive, but so are your
onlookers).
Hum of road traffic,
our staring faces are
not even an afterthought,
only the purrs of mom & dad
parading through the mists
of Oregon summer’s end.

Oh, the November Night!

   My lover as you rustle
in your slumber greeting dreams & blue flashes,
I watch our full moon through wires of branches
blossomed the November night who runs cold
over your blank skin, over our drifting apart.
   She leaks her light,
she covets wilting lawns & starry galaxies,
our restless yearnings & my endless seeking.
   Our midnight is a mystery—
in silence I’m sewn to your absence & loudly
I pray for clues in grooves of crucifix & red
           arches galloping across Utah at dawn.
   Scrawny now the sky—
the moon, her bruised body, will fade & no longer
know me nor the quiet nor dreams you keep balled
           up behind your eyes who time Novembered.
   It comes to me
in passing waves, a crushing weight—
                   not heaviness nor darkness
             is the color of my love for you.

Pennsylvania.
November 2025.

Coyotes, birds, dogs, & me

Do coyotes cry
for their mothers
who’ve disappeared
into Foggy Ruin?
Do birds lose sleep
over lost loves
buried in their wings
for a tangle of eternity?
Because I cry over lost loves
leaving me for last times
and for my mother
who left herself behind
Tell me, do dogs dream
with snoots on windowsills
of chasing squirrels
up Endless Mountain?

October

October comes, we go chasing
after sunspots under murky skies
and hide away in heated rooms
under lamplight in evenings
screaming out open windows
into lost void of a new black
emptiness
the likes you have not seen
since February doldrums
gripped you and drowned me
and lifted gently its icicle veil
into March’s crooked staircase

October comes, our amber sorrows
deepen in chasms of river valleys
plummeting down loose nail railways
sewn to river’s bend leaking dreams
into some strange new blue body
bent by waves of a withering belief

October comes, the end is an ashy cross
slobbered on our foreheads’n bemarked
by long beaked birds flying south
into neon auroras of spangled night
where gunfire teeths and spills over
backyard hills wrought with old joy
and ghosts of shadows beat alleyways
leafless and swallow them whole

Go hold your mother, find your father
October comes and the only place to run
is home.

North Philadelphia.
October 2024.