Homecoming
the rocket falling all the years of stars collected in pearly pools rush by as the white egret turns to watch in this melted dawn our swift return to Earth homecoming means new hugs new breath new minutes to lie down in the grass of rivers and antiquity I missed the wind the most green […]
Autumn Dragons
Gone now are their ephemeral green scales, replaced by a brighter palette of red and gold and yellow, and mounded sinuously by a combination of rakes, my three kids, and some applied direction. It’s a leaf dragon, I tell them. Akin to a grass snake, and slain by young warriors. We need now to ensure […]
Late Words for the Moon
There you are, old moon, old rock-in-the-sky, still holding when I rise on shaky legs for water to wash the bitter powder of the sleeping pill from my tongue. How have I come so untethered from your pull I must be chained to the time-release anchor of these capsules? Tonight, all I have failed to […]
Outlasting Energy
I’m looking out the window for the promised meteor shower, rain of fire the heavens release, while my thumb walks a dry pattern on the brasswound top strings of the guitar; wood’s vibration against the bone above my heart reminds me man’s first instrument was probably the drum. This room, hollow as a drum, trembles […]
The Valley of Sleeping Women
One iron-cold hour still divides night from dawn. Mist hangs smoke-thick over the river, a blanket to hide its endless motion. Outside the tavern, the tide-steady pulse of police lights throws an underwater glow over the parking lot, the knotted school of late drinkers shivering under clouds of breath-smoke, drawing the small fires of cigarettes […]
