This hot muggy morning


settles on my parched skin


like misty fog kissing


a stand of leafy birch trees


on the Baltic Sea.

Into The Cave Of Self

Spelunking

slowly, methodically,

deliberately down

into the cave’s murky darkness,

 

I feel the quiet air start to stutter

as hordes of crazed bats rise up

in wild flutter inside the belly

 

of this unnamed gloom. Moist

air lays heavy on my goosefleshed

skin, coats my panicked thoughts

 

like rancid butter smeared

on crusts of moldy bread. My

useless eyes can’t see a thing

 

as deeper I drop through what seems

a massive suite of empty rooms.

Then, like an infant new to crawling,

 

I leap openheartedly towards an audacious

unplanned falling as this spaciousness

unfurls,

and welcome something real

and watery,

 

something yet unseen.

 

Ahhh….the wordless restive callings,

this infinitude of yearning within

our pioneering souls!

Saturday Breakfast

          
May your happy tongue be a fat
planet eternally orbiting the enlivening
yellow-orange sun of this sweet

luscious grapefruit. In love with
its juicy plump flesh, this radiance
entering into the cool cave

of your eager mouth, you speak
a lusty smiling silence, your newest
language.

Its small oval seeds harbor a secret
chlorophyll growing the neurons
of your blooming brain where
this long hunger is fulfilled by
what flows in-between.

Let yourself languish and linger
in the ripened fruit's astonishing
succulence,

taste its tingling poetry, simmer
in its solar system the whole day
through!

white butterflies float
and scatter
like bits of flying glass


or tiny linen handkerchiefs


along this hard-packed
path I run on.

SOLSTICE

The hawk circles high overhead.


Again and again she glides and
floats in the open sky above me
like the soul of a friend or a new/
found poem.


I call out to her raucously as I tumble
down from the mountain peak
on this day of the Winter Solstice
when darkness overcomes light.


I’m exhilarated and half-crazed, wild
with grief and hope and this unplanned
embodied bravery, this wholehearted
stumbling towards the bottom.


Yet the silent beauty of this solitary winged
creature, regal and pure in late afternoon’s
spacious coolness, the diffuse oranges and
yellows of the setting sun, these many angled
hunks of granite rock I clamber easily on,


over, around and down this happy steep
slope, and yes, these bright, newborn
surprises of Winter—tender green blades
of grass—are held within a soft haze
of marine air, a diaphanous invitation


from beyond, oozing in slowly from
the distant coast. I kneel here on muddy
ground and pray ‘yes’ and ‘thanks’
for this day and all who inhabit its shine


and shadow as I fall further and quietly,
now nearly breathless in my own animal
earthen circling, homewards toward a cup
of coffee and comforting warmth, as she


the sudden visitor, ethereal and so real,
Winter’s auburn herald, disappears
northwards into such a final immensity.

Ocean

The ocean shimmers out beyond the orange buoys.

Daylight bends back towards tomorrow.
Maybe rain will fall again one day in this town
of shopping malls and desiccated desert ground.

 And then you may return with a bracelet

of green jade on your right wrist  and
a basket woven of small surprises, salty, wet
on your smooth tanned back. A robust quiet
ripening, your favorite calling card.

Then the ocean’s play with light and wave

will make sense once more.


Then hope shall erupt and rise from the nestled shore
like the slender dancer drunk and lusty wild
at a gypsy wedding.

And then and only then the New Orleans funeral marchers shall

swagger single file down Bourbon Street on a shining day soaked
all golden like dervish saints, their music spilling over
with such sweetness, salt and swelter.