This Ridge

Long and narrow, it weaves its way
through my arteries, 
a catheter of earth
and clay slowly
replacing blood,
cooling bones,
hardening. 
But I don't mind, 
for I won't need
to be buried.
I will become
an old rock
instead of
a rotting corpse,
here forever.
And years
from now
a girl I love,
an old woman
herself,
will lean
against my sun
baked body
to watch ducks
on the pond. 
Muscle memory
will cause her
to sit
upon
the familiar lap
of Mama.

Get Busy

“I shall not hate,” says the Palestinian doctor
wiping blood of his daughters from the ceiling
of their crumbled bedroom. “These are their weapons -
These books.  These papers!”
 
“I shall not hate,”
says the old professor,
writing story after story of the gas chambers
that swallowed his mother,
working a lifetime to turn truth into myth,
into something other than piles of bones.
 
“I shall not hate,”
says the student standing
before a bulldozer that will strike her tender body,
a fatal bruising and breaking
because she believes that people
deserve to live lives in homes
of their own.

Every day

you run a marathon in pursuit of happiness,

new music,

interesting books and big decisions
like whether or not to buy mangoes
out of season your only defense
from the emptiness of this existence
of ease and hatred.

Get busy and love.

Dad

When I was small and you seemed grown up but weren’t really
you sometimes let me tinker
in your shop, the old slanting chicken coop

under the walnut trees that dropped
their rotting autumn fruits on the tin roof like grenades.
I kept my tools, the ones you gave just to me,

near the wood stove with its shovels full of sawdust behind.
It was my favorite place to work.
The chill of your fear didn’t penetrate there.

While you made masterpieces
of cherry and oak,
swearing incessantly at their imperfections,

I fiddled around with your left-overs,
screwing together picture frames and once a miniature
hope chest.  Its rounded top of thin hardwood sticks

virtuous to my eye.  I sanded it smooth,
gave it an antique looking lock with a key
and a coat of clear finish.  I thought then

that what I hoped for would come in the form of a
boy to fill my chest. 
And he did come and he did fill me

for a time.   We both wore white – not because
we were virgins, but because
we were young.  And now you are both gone

of your own selves, you and my boy,
by your own hands that have been so clever
yet incapable of reaching divinity,

Oh, how the scent of fresh sawdust blinds me still.

Flicker

Flown in fresh from the night,
begging for breakfast through my window; 
Peck.  Peck.      Peck?
Blink.  Blink.      Blink?

You cock your head,

Please?
But I can see your fullness
and you don’t fool me.
This is not your first stop for seed.

You display the whole sky on your burly chest –

crescent black moon sideways
over firmament,
flecked in astral bodies
and that brilliant flash  

of red-orange sea

that catches sunlight
as you swoop swoop now
away across the field
in your unmistakable amplitude.

Undone

You sit there in front
of the fire, lotus style,
wrapping your newly long and slender
legs around themselves like seaweed
tangled into a knot.

You laugh and show me how “the boys”

sit this way at school and then pretend
they’re unable to unlace themselves,
having to move about like penguins
on their knees, wobbling.

I ask how your teacher likes this silly stuff
and you ignore my sobriety, squealing,
even when I warn you about the table’s
proximity to your wildly reeling head.

Legs still pretzled, you roll back boldly,
displaying yellow underpants and
baby fattened belly,
your nightgown falling into a mask.

Muffled through flannel, your voice

feigns helplessness, “undo me Mama!”
though I am already undone.

I lift you in position

and bring the ball of you
to my lap for straightening.
Those legs, long as my arm now
and soft, so soft.

Up Early

I know the moon
to be big
but as it was swallowed
by the wide mountain
this morning
it became smaller
than your daddy's
round face
warming the pillow
next to mine
glowing in reflected light
and tho' I know I have
more days
to love you three,
size and space and time
are all relative,
we must love now.

Wild Coho in Egg and I Creek

Against waters

risen only yesterday

come their bodies,

a muscled leaping

and heaving,

flashing crimson

over mossy rocks.

Erratic exertion

is balanced

by moments of pause
respite

repose

mirroring the movement

by which

we reach for eternity,

sometimes graceful,

but more often

in zealous ejaculations of fury

or delight.

We gawk as tails thrash wildly

in contortions of acrobats. 

Making love

to the water

just this once

they climb

towards shallow beds

of gravel

in which to bury gems

of fire.