The Boat

Maybe the eyes of a dragon or goddess
glare from its prow.

More likely it leaks, loses an oar,
and reeks of rainbows awash on a sheen
of gutted salmon and gasoline.

If it’s a liner, we lash ourselves
to whatever will float or sell.

No matter which. We choose. We’re aboard,
icebergs or no, as we plow
through the songs of the siren stars –

one boat, black water, dark whispering below.

Winter Geese

Sometimes I watch winter geese
veering back through dreams,

wild wings spread
like shadow-puppet hands,

lights above high desert dancing
behind a threadbare sheet.

From unmade beds
and ice-jammed fields, desire
ascends to heaven.

What use is it?

Roof-bound vanes shudder,
unwillingly point northwest

where clouds climb distant mountains,
trailing seed and mist.

Here in the parched morning,
earth swirls into dreadlocks
down an appaloosa’s mane,

and wind rasps out
with a stutter – short of breath –
no answer to my question

put to sun and moon and rain.

Old Story

They say that God was telling
her unbelievable story
when suddenly she pulled
a slender hand full of props
(sun, moon, earth and various stars)
from her sky-black velvet purse.
After setting each
in almost perfect motion,
she paused
while creation held its breath
for the inescapable conclusion.

None of this matters to you or me.
Philosophy won’t clear arteries
or send blood coursing through thought.
And when you think
you have it nailed down,
wind shifts and shadows sharpen –
a heron ripples mirror’s pond;
a goshawk drops without a sound.

Sasquatch Speaks

Born on the Ring of Fire,
in a grove the chainsaw missed,
I would have called myself a local
had not I-5’s aromas tempted me
to taste the trembling cities
and wander faultline alleys,
my out-of-focus amble
betrayed by tabloid news.
Perhaps the village of my youth
was only a raven on a pole,
a cedar bound to clay,
whose wooden wings and once-cut roots
regrew, whose painted eyes still peer
through monkish cowls of air.
Perhaps the moon unmasked
as midnight’s raven paled to wolf.
Perhaps, content to show myself,
I shed my well-worn pelt.

Sleeping on Amtrak

Evening slathers borrowed gold
on strangers’ faces,

drops a skin of rain
on fields and silos streaming by.

A faint click-clack with shadows
fans shuttered eyes.

Towns recede like memories of kisses,
broken toys, first snow, seventh grade.

Tracks tunnel into haze
enveloping a trestle over mocha river veins.

Loosely worn by summer,
dusk’s threadbare veil caresses us,

as fragile as the fog that shelters lovers,
as quick to vanish as

one-hundred years of steam.

Dream of the Savanna

Baggage lost, rains wrung dry,
stories scoured by whims of air,
I arrive a stranger

worn thin by voyaging,
by wondering and warring,
by my tribe’s sixty-thousand-year march.

Has my scroll of rivers
unwound to its end?
I ask, but no one living knows.

The map to my village?
Nowhere found.
Grandmother elephant refuses to say

where she has carried
the bones of my name.
Baobab’s broad back shields me from sun

while wind-through-tall-grass
whispers, Here!, but whirls on.