Blue Riddles

What is the taste of moonlight, flat stare of a lake?

What is the star at the heart of a stone, the sound of salt, a field-hand’s song?

What is the crown of night and the depth of day?

What is the wolf’s tooth, beat of a jay’s wing, curve of a cornflower petal?

What is the flame on the stove, the butterfly named sleep, the dog-named star, what is the spark inside my hand on the switch?

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

In Praise of Rain

Because it turns the grey concrete to silver

and the brown grass to green

 

Because it giveth the thirsty to drink

 

Because the music of it on the roof at night

is the sweetest lullaby

and because of petrichor

 

Because holding an umbrella over a stranger’s bag of groceries

can win you a fleeting smile

or a life-long friend

 

Because of salmon

 

Because the robins rejoice when the earthworms rise

 

Because we take for granted the turning of the taps, hot and cold

and the easy power of the showerhead

 

We take for granted the humming of the dynamos at Bonneville

and the flip of every light-switch

 

Because every kind of mushroom grows from the bark dust

around the trees in my neighborhood

 

Because when I am tired I wrap my eyes in green

 

Because of trilliums in the ravines of Marquam Hill

 

Because when I am tired of hot blue skies

there are thunderheads towering in the sunset

 

Because it reminds me to look up –

to look above myself

I praise rain.

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

So Far from Family and Fire

prompt misquoted from Danusha Laméris’ “Small Kindnesses”

 

far from hearth, heart, heart-stone

from home-light, home-life

 

far from hearth-rug, old dog sprawled seeking heat to comfort old bones

 

far from kettle, far from black pot swung on iron hook, andirons, fire-irons, fire-screen

 

far from house-wife, house-husband, house, home, kitchen, dog

 

wings of fire, dragon-fire, phoenix-fire, sky-spread like sails.

 

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Seen from the Air

I. September, 1982

 

Flying cross-country with United

I look out the window and learn so much.

 

I see the square fields of the Midwest

give way to the circles of the Great Plains,

 

see the violent upthrust of the Rockies

still roiling the air into in-flight turbulence.

 

I see the cloudless inter-mountain

painted every shade of late-summer dust.

 

The pilot’s bored, I guess. He entertains

himself and me with travelogue:

 

and on the right-hand side, folks, you can see

the mighty Columbia, Queen of the Western Rivers

 

if you look out now you can see Mt. St. Helens

with the flat top from the eruption

 

and here comes Mt. Hood on the left, we’ll be

making our final descent into Portland shortly

 

II. March, 2019

 

Since then I’ve learned new (old) names:
Ooligan, Wy’east, Lawetlat’la.

 

Shapes: the serpentine of riverbeds before

the trapping out of beavers, the dams and drainage.

 

Colors: subtle desert tones of sage, rabbitbrush,

mountain mahogany. Every shade of pink

 

that rhododendrons teach. I’ve learned

what cannot be seen from the air—

The feel of home.

 

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside