Selected poems

ELK CALF

Oh 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
not even an afterthought,
only purrs of mom and dad
parading about the airs
of Oregon summer’s end.

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 speaks
        her language
  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.

SUSKY

Oh, Wild Susquehanna keep rolling
over bends of breakneck hillslopes
catapulting sunstruck guardian angels
of redtail hawks into yr dizzy skies
growing indigo and silent like dreams
of lost lovers who long left east
and die under western starswarms
to remember yr slow thrills forever

OCTOBER COMES

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, Pa.
October 2024.

HOLLYWOOD

Una my Luna, my love everlasting,
the Hollywood Hills are spangled black
Blue as the night sky the dreams we share
are eons smogbent softer than sadness in a red dawn

I run to you ragged breathless raging,
waging reason in seasons of despair
to make whole the holy knolls, hillocks of yr breath
Who am I to say the moon is a radical you?

Luna rise, the sea she sets bending backwards from yr eyes
Luna dream of darkened winter days wilting on the sands
Luna see the wings on me, the fire in your belly
Luna know the love I hold is yours and mine to keep

Let’s bury away eastern horrors Atlantic tried and lost,
and ride the lines, the yellow divide to Pacific ends
You can only run for so long, you and me both,
until suffering hangs its naked head and tells us to aim west.

Los Angeles, CA.
July 26, 2025.