My mind hiccupping back
to that sweet May smell
of high snowpack melting,
tickling down river beds – glacial shock
to the underbelly of sun-stunned rock –
I keep thinking didn’t it smell like rain
to a thirsty traveler, but as usual
there comes the question of honesty. Really
I couldn’t have been thinking of travelers,
thirsty or otherwise, for wasn’t I lost
in […]
Driving the 22 north, noon sun and wind
warm on the arm in the ears
through the rolled down window
kd lang’s Hymns rolling too
through the long-grassed foothills
and you beside me,
the baby snoozing in the back seat,
it’s so hard not to feel drowsily,
contentedly alive, river water and campground dust
in the nooks of my elbows, my toes,
on my fingers […]
I like my garden half-wild.
Everything in my small vegetable patch melds
tomato plants gone crazy, lettuce and mint co-mingle, carrots hide.
In September, on a night with sudden frost,
I’ll be out with bowls and buckets, and flashlight,
searching for tomatoes in every dark plant cranny.
But now it is August and their fruit hangs green and heavy,
one tomato turning […]
Elephantine skies
weigh down prairie flatlands
where sagebrush swats at
grainy memories,
kicked up with each step
like black flies
let loose from a peaty ditch.
A fine ochre of yellow and brown dust
blows hot over the stalks and straw of
an endless sea of wheat.
It salts my face and hair,
the grit gets under my shirt
and chaffs my chest.
If you follow the curved […]
The highway through the graveyard
of Frank is a granite moonscape
that glows bone white at night.
But we drove through in August heat
that melted the waxy wings of angels,
the sun bearing down to warm the dead.
Even flies curl up under stones.
Here, the blue turtle’s ancient sleep broke.
A single fin drooped down to shatter dreams.
Humble Frank is silent […]
