Lean Down

Lean down into
the one true story

of your own slow,
sure uncurling

and taste with eager
tongue Winters’
silent soil

where silver seeds
of ‘thanks’ and ‘yes’
are somehow born
again,

these twins conceived
in hope’s warming,
obscure light

among the tangled
weeds and stones

of your jagged grief.

Hiking Otay Mountain

i slipped the day-pack off
my sturdy shoulders,

and, smiling with the day,
lay flat on my back
on a small soft patch

of green on a steep
boulder strewn hillside
far above

the slender seductive
gorge beckoning
below.

i gazed up as in an easy
dream, the clouds

grazed lazily across
great fields of sky

and i offered my puny self
to the wondrous
silent moment

and the tantalizing promise
of rain, a scent of
wetness in the wings,

nourishing and
freeing for
all that is

or will be

on this
amazing
earth.

The Respite

Let go your many entanglements
for just this one hour and come

sit quietly here with me
underneath a sky of rose
and cotton clouds next to
a calm and clear blue lake,

see how these bold grey
massive mountains stand
straight and thick against
our tired backs like a proud
yet supple spine,

and all out there in front,
the forest of golden aspen
shimmers its brightly glee-

ful leafy grins like a pair
of flaxen-haired undozing
twins,

so cozy playing
on our lazy laps.

new leaf on old ground

A Question For You..

What in this world
makes you weep
with surprise

pure tears of
true wild
beauty,

and breaks
your great
soul out
of this too
comforting
sleep walk

that has muted
and dimmed

the real
shining
life-light

of your sweet god-given
eyes?

Anini Beach,Kauai

I love to laze
in a place
that curves

like this cove
where we swim,
lay and laugh
today--

(I'm happy
to say it's
not at all
snazzy).

I like the way
its’ blueness
plays cool
and small,

as glistening
waves roll
easy over

our softly
purring
bodies.

We don’t have
to do or be any
clever thing

as Kauai’s sweet,
sweet breezes

massage us
and please,

while everything,

everything,

gently oozes
beauty.

poem after listening to Leonard Cohen, the Byrds and Beatles and Buffalo Springfield on "You Tube"

I’m up late, hunkered down in the soft brown
armchair listening to the glorious music
of the ‘60’s on my laptop,

everything is warm and almost silent somehow
in spite of these beautiful old songs of rousing
protest and kaleidoscopic dreams of becoming
a rock and roll star coursing through little curved
headphones,

I am taken back to my twentieth year : Vietnam,
Civil Rights, Kent State, pot and blotter acid,
Existential philosophy, VW buses with blown
head gaskets, all-nighters, too many dinners
of Polish dogs and rotgut Red Mountain wine,

then after the student health center's test results
living with Sandi, my first real girlfriend pregnant a
a year before Roe v. Wade, terrified and bewildered,

we were trapped together thrust onto a crumbling
razor thin ledge of real adulthood where we curled

up that long summer of the first manned moon
landing, survived those hot months of red worry
and fraudulent foodstamps with our ragged rascal
puppy ‘Chinook’ and his looping curved white tail

like a surrealist’s paintbrush until the County adoption
went through and we went on somehow like nothing
big had happened.

Then and tonight Leonard Cohen sings in his dark
thickly masculine voice prayers of longing and
dancing to the end of love in Chelsea Hotels where

quick blowjobs on unmade beds were apparently
common, freely given while shiny black limos and

yellow cabs idled curbside downstairs under a
shimmering cover of light snow....

….it all keeps drifting
earthwards
at dusk.