In making we can miss and see it clearly.

Yet nothing stays of aiming once we miss.

That is, unless the thing clicks into crystal, all the force

it took to try remains obscured. And making gone

is marked by ash that can’t resemble

how a flicker of invention burned in gold

when it began. Also that each failure differs

from the one before so as we scoop them into palms

to turn each lesson over singly

we become not indestructible nor prepared.

I brought this worry to a teacher just tonight

and she—who typically speaks loudly—

softened in the low-lit office saying

include ALL that works and loosen

what destroys you. In that light I loved her

for her gentleness and basking in it

vaguely saw a generosity emerge

inside the pocket where invention waits. In childhood

there was another teacher I remember

by recalling some particulars: a sound—

keys that jangled at his hip, the way his face

changed when his lunch was interrupted,

that it seemed sometimes he could not look

you in the eye and others lit you chosen, smiling.

Perhaps the marks remain not from a singular

magic, but because I was a girl. Still, intertwined

and captive in the writing I trace circles

toward the truth, knowing the task

to be impossible, that writing history alone

can never capture any edge. And yet

into my body it is written whole, in gratitude

that rises forth before the gentle, transparent woman.

Growing calm and separate

I think how lovely the rift—

wide and clear between us.

Fenrir and the Star

I dreamt that you swallowed the sky; snapped those cold chains a second time and ruminated a fragile freedom. I dropped from the empty black like a loosed diamond-- tumbled into strange country, into your untame hands. Who can alter fate's design? You, there with a sword in your throat, and I, lost among equivalent millions. Or will we trust that windblown we too may take root and flourish? The scale will tip, Lone Grey: For who would destroy the world when there is so much love to make? 1-8-10

flabbergasted

Does this book serve any purpose
the whistling ash of this memory or that
the slender cartilage cathedral of the imagination
the long nailed goddess of this or that dream

5 years prior my house caught fire
after I rescued my baby brothers
their were items of sentimental significance
the ball, the spyglass, the oyster shell, the sundial

let them last a little longer
even as the glacier melt
pours onto our laps
and our kisses resound like
eggshells in the basement of elusive consciousness

I am yours you are me
I am around you I am between
on the mountain
I am under your heels as you walk
In the heavans
as you drink the sky

You are incarnating mirror
images faster then I
can reach out and caress
the flaccid radio dial

a turn to the left
at the Bolivian bullfight
5500 miles from me
350 miles from the sea

a turn at the right
and Tilden park beach
kids washing up
like kitchen flies
around my ears and smoking

Flex back the peel
first left then right
turn the page down 300 east
to my aging sunbathed bodies twilight
and be midcentury, flabbergasted

Rag-doll of Kilkenny

I will not speak of where I found her bird-boned and fragile; all rag and filth she was and gazed at me with hungry eyes-- that were not fierce nor calculating, but empty as a piece of sky. It was the eyes, as they were, chilly and still blue, very round and almost popping out of her shrunken face... the loose jaw bobbing-- no voice. I swaddled her in my apron and brought her through the door. All I had was a bowl of milk still warm from the May cow. When she finished, her lashes were moist and I thought I saw the ghost of a smile before she laid by the smoking ashes, content, limbs heavy like clay; and, like clay, grew cold. 12-4-09

the sound of your pencil

scratching

me

reminds

that once i was old

and remembered

that once i was young

that once it all begun

with the morning

born

from our writing

hope

we three hands

wrinkled bodies

nearing

death

Of Hazel and Well

Old Hazel is bent with the load-- bowed boughs shade the Well; swelling waters of Moon tide hide an ancient Mother. Another season Hazel waited-- mated to time and mysteries          and when ripened let fall all her epiphany and "splash!" Flash of silver answers           in echoing hollows swallows the vessel           but retains its gift and swift returns           to deep, dark, and cold. 12-4-09

Skeleton Tree

Through turning season swell
I have been bleached white:
finally effaced with salt and sand;
like the skeletal tree
that was so oft adrift--
freely jaunt,
playing as both hull and mast,
only to falter
and beach itself 
in time.

11-17-09

on married men who don’t wear rings

you thought he tried

to shut-eyed bashful hide

delight when on the stairs

you nearly crashed

from opposite directions

through the winter rushing

with your duties bearing

heavy coats and other burdens

on your ways you thought the other time he leaned

on accidental meeting

made a broadflash grin

inadvertent invitation but

it would be wiser not to trust such instincts

you are always reaching

dipping lazy fingers into sweet

imaginehaze for narrative, for poetry

looking in the wrong place for logic

that might order the

breaking litany still

after courtyard talk

the leveling of yellow leaves

walk beyond the pale

when he shied from the brown gaze

you must have steadied

though inside you wobbled jelly

it is certainly a first

and a new father too

baby just two months how almost comic

were it not bursting

the little gasoline dream

that had been tugging you along

I’ve spent eternity in a wasps nest
Not inhabited
But dry and withered
The grey of its walls spilling onto the floors
All is chalky and warm

While I plunge
To the one place in my life
With walls
I defy to recognize
That wasps are still here
First just pricking my flesh
Then the torrent
And my white, warm,
Naked flesh is filled with scabs

And while this Jonah
Wondered away from his home
All manner of diamond footed lynx
And syrup tongued foxes
Snuck into his dead den
And took the cheap trinkets that were stored their
While he was away

finding honey

New Decade, Embarcadero

At the surface of things

loose cupped hands comb

water through spaces

between fingers. Talk

but do not plunge the arm in deep—

cold to the elbow—No

you are civilized; Stay aloft

at the surface. Fingernails click

at the lacquered tabletop, the talk:

only a gentle disturbance to the deep

green pond beneath.

If you tore the lid off,

would there be many eels? Or one

thick-bodied fish, spotted and slow,

a jeweled box guarded by a gate?

At the surface of things

the new year is turning,

clicking over

while some thousand bodies shout at it—

edge of a number

and not so arbitrary edge

of land and bridges sparkling loudly into night.

You are the grand cog shifting

in the pond’s very bottom.

Together make the marker

of change to guard against

otherwise—fear that every moment

is in fact the same.