Mayor of Kauai

a new direction

SEASON

The October night sank like an old masculine sun
under the leafy new season it did dissolve into dust

while a wrinkled up woman in a tattered wool shawl
wrote love letters, mailed one by one into the shrill wind

and as the ancient birch porch creaked in the dark
she cleared her thin throat for the last time,

stood high on the warped boards in the thick
Autumn cold where her twin girls had stored
sugary treats decades ago.

She raised her bony tired red hands and as
strong as the full moon shining bright and so
long down onto Blue Pond

spoke her true simple words which
in the end were her heart's mind.

I guess you could say before her
brown eyes closed for good she

had dined slow and chewed well
at this lush feast of life

which to my open, half broken ears
did say it all.

what lurks for you?

the beautiful mundane

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.