Sister to Bridges

I am sister to bridges, companion to skyscrapers.
I hover over the night city, beating my wings moth-soft
against the steam-laced exhalate of sleeping buildings.
Starlight on frost as delicate as peach fuzz
makes steel and concrete tender.

I am a queen in tattered furs
and garlands of unused lightning.
I swim in the swirls of oil that decorate
the freezing puddles at every corner.
You haven't seen how they catch the light
and make the narrow spectrum of sodium
into a royal rainbow.

You have not seen me if you haven't looked
behind the cold mirrors where the mannequins stand
at unnatural angles. You have not peeled away
the shreds of old paper hanging from the bottom
of the newly painted billboard.
You deepened inward, not away.

I am sister to bridges. I am companion to trains
that wail at night like iron cats. To ships
that cry in the fog, “Lost, lost!” I am of the steel and glass kindred,
bone-cousin to esplanades and waterfronts.
I am light glancing back from windows,
not sky but the reflection of sky. I am the colorless growth
that climbs the ash-heap, spreading razor-edged leaves.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

An Empty Glove is a Gesture

A void inside saddle-stitched leather,
a thought in the shape of a hand.

He looks at the gloves in the window
and thinks of the shapes of her hands.

She kneads her loaves in the kitchen
and thoughtfully shapes them by hand.

The deliberate arch of your fingers,
worlds of thought in the shape of your hand.

I am a glove full of emptiness
a thought that God shaped like a hand.

--image courtesy of Magpie Tales
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Gift-Wrapping

What they've told you about the rainbow
isn't true.

A rainbow's just a ribbon tied around
a gift wrapped in sky-blue paper--
the world, hanging on a branch
of gravity, the limb of Sol.

Small rainbows are everywhere,
in drops of salt spray, broken decanters,
the plunge pool at Latourelle Falls
and the sprinklers on the neighbor's lawn.

Angels spend a lot of time
tying each one just so. You ought
to pay attention to them!

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Wind Music

I walk out
in the ringing of porch chimes
and the cello hum of power lines.
I walk out in the drum-symphony of rain
head down in a bitter wind.

The camellias began to bloom
at solstice. The crocuses woke
on the shortest day of all--
officially the first day of winter.

In the music of spring I learn
to disbelieve the calendar.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Toy Song

I'm just a rubber-band flight machine
A rocking-horse winner on runners of wood
I'm just a rabbit in velveteen
An animate toy with a heart but no blood.

Wrap me in red and green cellophane
Under the tree at the top of the heap
Sad is the present that no-one claims
Just give me a try, I can be yours to keep.

Tear off the paper, uncover me
Wind me all up and let me run around
Clap as I tumble down giddily
It's a wonderful life til my mainspring runs down.

Tired of playing, they toss me aside
My paint is discolored, my gears are all stripped
Unwanted toys commit suicide
By starving like songbirds whose wings have been clipped.

I was a world-war flying ace
Secretariat winning the old Triple Crown
Now I remember the glory days
and wish that my mainspring had never run down.

So wrap me in red and green cellophane
Under the tree at the top of the heap
Sad is the present that no-one claims
Sadder the toy that a child won't keep.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Solstice Dance

Today I dressed in the colors
of bare earth and embers.
I danced with the old sun
for the last time.

Tomorrow I'll dress in spring green
and dance for the first time
with the new sun.

Moon, stop laughing,
it's true you're new every month.
I danced for you in red and silver
but you hid your skull grin in clouds.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

At the Bottom of the Year

Look up from solstice
as if from underwater
searching for light.

See how the walls of the year
curve upward, away
slick and translucent

and God drops a ruby
in the bottom of the glass.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Life at the South Pole

We live at the South Pole.
How do I know? They say
moss grows on the north sides of trees--
look around you. Q.E.D.

Also they said you could find freedom
by following the Big Dipper north
but that was in other states. When's the last time
you saw stars here?

Anyway bondage now takes subtler forms
like unseen red lines on maps
or freeways that end inexplicably

and freedom isn't something you find
at any point of the compass rose
but something you build around you.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Ruby-Throat

A leafless tree, a grey and windy sky--
I would have missed him, but he turned his head
and flashed metallic scarlet. I stopped dead
on the sidewalk, stricken through the eye
by color bright enough to penetrate
the dullness of disuse around my heart.
A wakeup call, a conscience-striking dart
to rouse me from my sorry, torpid state!

A hummingbird is not much of a singer:
his call, announcing nothing more than presence,
is a single harsh and grating note.
But how he wears that ruby iridescence
as though a thoughtful God had lanced a finger
and pressed it to the tiny feathered throat.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Two word salad poems...

Rimshot

in the smoky club:
the singer sways at the mike
her off-the-shoulder dress clinging to her body
like hazel groves to the flanks of the Himalayas.
No theorem could encompass those curves,
bada-bing!

Leakage

We spend the summer caulking windows
and still every night
water drips inside our walls.

The bungalow uproots itself
motor-home racketing down a flooded freeway
or deep-running submarine stalked by

the indelicate menaces of every urban life
and the subtle leakages
of inevitable failure.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Back to the Mirror

I have come back to the mirror
not to find myself
but the world I have lost.
I see no forest
only trees.
They are cherry trees. They are blooming.
White petals sift to the ground one by one
like
blank
pages
reproaching me with every poem I could not write.

I have come back to the mirror
to find it clouded with my own breath
pitted with the acid of my sweat
stained yellow with the jaundice of these eyes.
If it were glass I could break it
but metal must be polished.

I have come back to polish the mirror
with a wad of crumpled paper
with a handful of fine linen
with a single petal.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Leaving the Trunk

leaving the trunk to search among the twigs
all you get is stupid
Han-shan (Cold Mountain): Here's a message for the faithful (trans. Red Pine)

if I leave the trunk it will be
to swan-dive among the leaves
to submit to the embrace of air
to seek the vastness of roots

and if I get a crack on the head
then that's what I get, Han-shan

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Google reminds us that today is the 55th anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to leave her seat. I'm reposting this in her honor.

On the Bus

Rosa Parks
1913 - 2005

This morning on the bus I saw
the faces of my neighborhood
yawning in the predawn dark:
"Good morning. Watch your step."
"You have a nice day now."

Black woman in a business suit
young white guy with a nose ring
blond mother with Latina baby girl
Korean grandma from the corner store
together on the bus.

Rosa, Rosa, were you with us
this morning on the bus?


Collection available! Knocking from Inside