Impervious to Moisture

No rain, at least; just chilly drifting fog
and half a moon, up-tilted, drinking sky
like darkness wine. The buses groan and sob,
protesting steep 15^th with diesel cries.
A cold condensing drop falls from a twig
and clings upon my coat-sleeve. Micro-suede
refuses to get wet. A casual flick
sends crystal fragments scattering away
like broken glass. Slick to every touch,
to feathered fog-kiss and to pouring rain,
I tread the dawn sidewalk, impervious
resisting splash of mud and coffee stain.
But micro-fiber coats, however sleek
cannot keep off the water from my cheek.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

If You See Something Suspicious

like, maybe
a brown-skinned woman in a headscarf?
I see her every morning
looking back at me from the rain-washed window
from the rain-washed dark outside the bus.

She is skeptical of both corporate policy and political corpus,
mistrusts gloss and spin alike.
Tell her she has nothing to fear
and she will regard you with doubt
for she is deeply suspicious.
Reassure her: “Now, you know that doesn't mean you--”
she says, “No,
I don't know that
I don't believe I do know that.”

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Low-Fat Gluten-Free Ginseng Caraway Scones

How interesting can you make
a low-fat, gluten-free ginseng caraway scone?
You have to sell it
like a magic trick. Trapdoors,
smoke and mirrors. Zowie! Bang!
Get the rubes hypnotized
into sharing a delusion of flavor.
Get them hooked.
Remember, it's for their own good:
they all have puppy-fat
they could afford to lose
and these scones--
well, you could starve to death.

--another word salad poem
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Gravity

Eagles would have you believe
that gravity is a fiction
and flight is effortless. Just spread your wings
and circle upward.

Chimney swifts claim gravity
is their toy. They reverse it at will--
hurtling, inches from the earth
they flip the switch
and plummet upward.

To hummingbirds, gravity appears
irrelevant: they float on air like thick soup.
You ask, then why this violent vibration,
invisible whirr of tiny daggered wings?
Indifferent to up and down,
they strain to fly
backward.

Sky-seeking heart,
study these models of gravity. Deny it,
play with it, ignore it
impose your own boundaries on it
but above all, fly
in the direction of your choice.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Breakwater

I have a poem up at a new site called PhotographProse. Check out the site while you're there.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Sinister

This morning my bus, the number 8
met the number 24 at the corner.
And looking in the window I saw
the 24, reflected
pull away in the opposite direction
taking with it the inverted ghosts
of all its morning passengers.

And I felt her leave me, my left-handed self,
my sinister twin, riding the anti-8
in the window of the 24. She clutched
a nickel in her hand, Jefferson
facing right, rode away down 15th
to a destination I can't imagine.

I could have caught her hand and traded places--
one Alice for each side of the looking glass.
Ah, but she would have always wondered
why none of the chessmen would speak
and grieved for the absent flame and whiffle
of the Jabberwock.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Parallels

When I was young they told me
sunrays were parallel.

As I grew older I thought:
they're not, really,
it's that they converge so slowly
to the distant point of the sun.

That was before I understood
the sun is not a point--
it's a mass immense enough to swallow
a billion earths.

An eye the size of a planet
falling up into the sun
would see it flat, a plain of fire.
Rays of light would stand on that great surface
like blazing trees.

When I was young I thought God was far
but God is vast.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The Tyranny of Pines

Leaves gather at the foot of the stairs
whispering incomprehensible secrets.

They will carry their secrets deep into earth
and teach them to the roots of new trees.

They will fly their news across a winter sky
to countries ruled by the tyranny of pines.

They will cradle baby foxes in their dens
and betray the careless steps of humans.

Everything is written on dead leaves
if we could only read the tracery of veins

or hear the rustled syllables underfoot.
Dead evergreen needles tell us nothing

except silence-- the hardest thing
for us to learn, the first and last lesson

taught by the dark, dark towers of resin.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside