IX

Made to hold in my fist
A natural spool
Moomintroll
If all of nature were like this
How could we believe
It wasn't made
With us in mind

VIII

Hard to imagine
A single metamorphosis
Crisscrossing minerals
Marble and sandstone
Limestone
Obsidian
Traces of fossil

Flux set in stone

VII

I once had a sandstone ring
The old man saw me fish it out of the sea
He said now I was married to the ocean
It fit my wedding ring finger perfectly

It snapped in a thunderstorm
Waking my boyfriend and I
On our first night in my bed

The sea is a jealous lover
I have found many rings since then
But none fit

VI

A pearl was forming
Like a vine frozen in the bud
Opalescent
Is there a word for the inside of seashells?
Something nascent
Numinous

V

Long ago all seashells were pink
That's why sand is pinkish

Relic from a prehistoric creature
The ridges in between ridges
Big as ridges on an ordinary shell

Interior hard as a rock

Did a pterodactyl eat you? A dinosaur step on you?
Or Venus crack you open like an egg?

The fingers of time
Stretch across your back

You make a good back-scratcher

IV

You have traveled a long way

to be so perfectly rounded

smooth like cool, hard lips

You keep your mouth

shut tight

hold your secrets close

Did you even notice anything?

What pulses in your thin pink veins,

your cold stone heart?

If I had rolled down the rivers

since time immemorial

would I be like you?

III

I met a boy who was obsessed with obsidian
Big hefty rocks, tiny black dots, arrowheads
He told me they used it for glass
This one is heavy and can be rolled like a die
Dark as the night sky
With shiny white stars
And black holes
If only I could throw it to tell the future
But who wants to know
Not the boy
Not I

II

This could be an arrowhead
used to hunt turkeys
a million years ago
but is probably a shard
from tooling a larger weapon

Is the tool used to make a weapon
a weapon or a tool?

What remains of the peaceful weapon maker
after he has bartered with the hunter and the warrior?

The flint sparks a flame
and survives

I

I am a perfect spiral cone
Perhaps if I had lived longer I would grow and grow
Climbing up to the stars
A Tower of Babel
Rising like a clown's hat from the ocean
With the whole planet as my head
Green continents for eyes
Antarctica my beard
Mustache and fluffy sideburns made of clouds
Lolling around the sun

Nine Stones and Shells

American River

Naked I swim in the American River
chilling my skin, warm to the core
I sunbathe on the rocks

How are people offended by nudity?

She cries ugly at bare breasts
under a tropical waterfall, and I wonder
what could be more beautiful?

Does she hate her own body
under her clothes?

Must she close her eyes
to have sex?

The river carries
antidepressants and painkillers
like an expensive purse

Children run joyously
over the meadow flowers
as a silver fish
is hauled flailing
from the gray reservoir

The river is dammed
where once a man panned gold
among mountains and valleys

I facebook my friends

Between Two Kingddoms

Maybe this is how we were meant to be
clothed in nothing but sunlight
naked flames of the campfire
licking its lips for more stories
each night

The magic of finding fruit
and sharing it

But we are always between two kingdoms
at once wholly animal and wholly other
trapped in the ether of communication
from generation to generation
living uneasily between body and mind

Sunbathing and campfires remind us
                                             of our souls

Mesquite Dunes

Fingers of the sun press into
my closed eyelids
and I feel like tumbling
down the golden slopes
the taste of sand
already on my lips

But first we must climb in silence
except footsteps that sound
like a great beast breathing

I imagine we are giving CPR
to mother earth
stroking the bare dunes with our feet

But I hear only the feet of others
my own feet silenced in anticipation
of my will, tensioning muscles and joints

For we are the orchestra
the melody plays through us
We are lucky if we catch
                              a glimpse of its beauty

Death Valley

In the valley of the shadow of death
I walk beside you

I am the acrobats
cartwheeling between the palm trees
the ghosts of absent friends

I am your father, your son
the worrier and the worried about

I am the stars in the night sky
friendly and terrifying

You see longing in the shapes of clouds
parting and joining, melting
across the blue sky at noon

To be is wanting
another place, another shape
another you

But I am one

The Wisdom of the Old Man

You carry your friends in your pocket
these days, said the old man
sitting on the bench at the top
of the hill with his dog overlooking
the higher mountain
as puffing I reached for my phone

He told me about his childhood
in this town coming up here
from below and I wished
we had held onto each other

And telling you this rekindled
our friendship.  You told me
the old man's wisdom was bogus
now you too have moved on

Is it wiser to go or to stay?
To hold on or to let go?

I carry you and the old man
in my head these days
I feel lighter that way

Perhaps you will spread your wings
and lift me up and I'll fly
waving at the people on the bench
up and over the highest mountain

A Playground For Dolphins

I would make a playground for dolphins
Out of these disused train carts
Filled with rainwater

Imagine the joy of the dolphin
Leaping from one to the other
Imagine the look of surprise
On passersby's faces

What if this were God's intention for us
And the train was moving
And all we could see was the sky
And the undersides of bridges zooming by

It would take a leap of faith
To land in another cart
But we could barely move
Without hurting ourselves

What if this really is
All there is to it
A row of gray carts
Filled with dirty rainwater

The train grinds
Along the track
To its final destination
Before turning back

And all the exaltation
Is in the leaping
And all the insight
The view from the top of the leap

Cool Cats

The cat is quiet on my lap
Jazz plays on the radio
I feel discomfort in my belly
But maybe this is not enough
I must really be suffering
The injustice of the cat's total release
Flopping across my knees
So I must maintain his balance
My foot numb on the wooden seat
He glares at my writing hand
I stroke him with the other
He follows the pencil like it's a butterfly
Weighing his chin down, purring
I am captive to this warm, soft
Unfriendly cat
A-kind, as in amoral
Pure selfishness
We suffer the same
Affliction

Stars They Told Me

Stars they told me on a day like this
you may as well be six foot under
soaking up raindrops through the cracks
growing foot fungus.  Forget it!
I try to appreciate the stars
in the underbellies of raindrops
clinging to new buds
star-shaped cherry blossoms
stars twinkling in puddles
from raindrops too far to see
neighbors in their homes
communing with stars on the TV
stars in their eyes
white stars in my cat's black fur
behind his eyelids closed in sleep

Count your blessings tonight
you will not be woken by the full moon
clinging warmly foot to foot
for it is cold among the stars

Worrier and Worried About

Can the shape of clouds
help me grasp
the tragedy across the ocean
whose gentle, lapping waves
replace the cloud of birdsong
as I walk along the shore
and imagine
the bridge closing my horizon
begin to tremble
realizing all that separates us
is the random walk of molecules
beneath the Earth's thin crust

Folk in Berkeley Ne'er Grow Old

Humming down the sidewalk on his miniscooter
Tie wagging behind like a flag
White wisps neatly tucked under his helmet
LED light mounted above
The professor on his lunch break
Cheers me up

Front Crawl

You swim smoother
if you push your face into the water
looking down not forward

You can imagine
pressing your forehead into the flesh of a giant beast
softly stroking the back of your head with its cold fingers

Maybe because it makes your tail come up
so you are skimming the surface
where there is least resistance

A Bridge Too Far

Water and fire, earth and air
We wander down the sodden trail
under the California pines
figuring the proper distance
between mothers and sons
wondering if we have gone
a bridge too far
when strange roads sound
under the fog in the valley
we turn at the waterfall.
Should we text them?
In amongst all this rain
we sit by the fire at the Westpoint Inn
and I think about you and I.
Have I gone a bridge too far?
My one belief is that we are responsible
for each other's freedom.
We all need
water and fire, earth and air

Barefoot and Fancy Free

Some things you can only know through your feet
The softness of mud
bursting with spring grasses
The smoothness of well trodden trail
Earth's bones crunching beneath our bones
jostling up through hips and spine
reaching our head
as we breathe in sky

We feel like the trees
we drink in through our eyes
digging their roots into soft soil
soaking up sunlight

We open our feet and take in
the fragility of the planet
our own fragility
through constellations of nerve endings
tingling like stars

Bubble

Rising up in the blue sky
toward the chalk white moon
long after the little girl
in the butterfly face paint
has stopped blowing bubbles
and people are talking of other things

Outlasting the higher bubbles
winning a game of celestial shuttlecock
stubbornly holding your breath
until the silent pop

Writing a Story

Writing a story is hard
There are so many choices
Setting the time and place
Casting the characters
Plotting the plot
Each one is arbitrary
There are an infinity of stories
to choose from
How much easier
To throw in the pen
And write a poem instead

Poems practically write themselves

Words With Friends

A word is a door
onto ocean depths of meaning
wide as a lifetime
rich as the menu at the fanciest restaurant
where seagulls feast on the pearls of dead men's dreams

But how to crack open
find the key to unfathom
this phantom shipwreck
bursting with strange fruit

Lost in a hall of mirrors
how will you even hear
the faint glub glub of my drowning

I must anchor my words to a patch of open sky
string them along like pearls on a chain
pearling your backbone
giving you life and limb

Who cares if we lost the plot
if we have bad boundaries

A word is a door
hold my hand and step in

University Cafe

How much more significant
The red curve
On the screen
When you consider
All the facts that went into it

The size of a butterfly's wing
The frequency of sunspots
Infant life expectancy in Africa
Nerve endings participating in a spike chain
The efficiency of aging routers
The economics of oil
The history of the modern world

The woman communes with her graph
Bringing her face close to the screen
Peering at it for minutes at a time
Wondering what it means
Her experssion is serious
She is deep in thought

Is there this much meaning
In the curve of a wave rolling into the ocean
The curve of a dolphin's back

If only we looked at each other
Appreciating all that went into
The curve of a mouth
How it relates to a life full of people
And their imaginings

Insomnia

The page is blank
like closed eyes without lashes
a smiling Buddha without a mouth
maybe it's hiding
all the sleep I lost
last night
last week
last year
a clean sheet
coming between me and you
a new leaf
turning in the wind
of a white midsummer night
north of the arctic circle
where a polar bear lost on the melting ice
is looking for the north star
white noise on the TV screen
after everyone has gone to bed
it is morning somewhere

The Meaning of Dreams

Remember the sense of deja vu
when we climbed the steep stairs
winding up the bare hillside
under the terraced houses
next to the old stairs
that had subsided?

A woman was standing on top of a ladder
tending her plants, dancing to music
that blared out from her window.
It made me feel giddy
just looking up at her.

When we reached the top we were so tired
we fell asleep on the floor in a side-room
of the rock concert hall

You didn't believe me
that the star was almost 70
until I showed you in the paper

We woke when the speakers buzzed
It was still all preamble, DJ's
They were projecting slides
onto the ceiling
of the room we were in

We had dreamt of the hillside town
the stairway
it wasn't real

The main show was about to begin
when I woke
the meaning of dreams, as usual
just out of reach

Dance Class

Only a handful
of bodies
are in the class
moving
so gracefully
I just watch
for a moment
before the instructor
invites me
to step in
and I wonder
if I have it in me
to move like that
but my body
is already flowing
to her words
that make no sense
only sensations

Stretch
Flow
Close your eyes

Breathe

Spring Flowers

I love the magic of identifying the buds
before they burst into bloom
snowdrop, crocus, daffodil,
narcissus, cyclamen
As though by naming them I am part of the process
iris, tulip, hyacinth
calling them forth from the earth
from my neighbors' gardens
without putting a hand to trowel or soil

If only life were like that

Flying West

Flying west daylight stretches out forever
like a blob of gum

I imagine the Earth spinning beneath us
through sunsets and sunrises
as we try to stick resolutely
to the unmoving sky
gaining only 2 hours in 10

But the sky spins too
as the Earth tumbles around the Sun
at breathtaking speed
and the Sun circles the center of the Galaxy
as the Galaxy zooms through the Universe

Only gravity holds us to what is closest

I wonder if like a cartoon but in reverse
when a character runs off the edge of the world
and then looks down
before falling
if we could see gravity's invisible threads
and become unglued