Back to the sun with half a cup
of Americano to go fathers
looking for their children as they
head off to work out on the open
ocean the night still a little fuzzy
at the edges of morning questions
of remorse are usual why do we
do the things we do the old men
at the coffee shop snapping
their newspapers against the wind

LEAVE IT OPEN

We start the day early each with our list
my wife taking hers down the coast in her
fist calls me saying Maui’s unusually clear
maybe I’d take my walk where I could see

but I set about loading the cuttings one
more thing on my list leading to another
until a change in the weather reminds me
I’d better head makai to find Haleakala

I look at the moon and think of the world these words
will never touch up there in the steadfast blue
somehow lunar reality seems upended
while the moving dot I call my mind
begs me to hold up a thumb and compare

the cuticle I call my own with this
heavenly satellite its light never its own
as the sun plays with us no it's more
a piece of cloud laughing like Kohala
mountains asking us to see through

That's how it all began.

The gallery the sepia colored photographs
of ships against the quay at low tide
the harbor less silted the men in the rigging
small boys and girls appearing twice
 or more in those days when picture-taking
was slow and the exposure long
for the youngsters of that sea town
in those days and now those youngsters'

If I tell her I'm available
she will look at me and smile
and leave me guessing her intention
whether pleasantly informed
or cynically inspired

It will not do she said
and rescued me from doubt
to blame the clock the calendar the phone
the internet the outside world your gout

I saw a garden I was small
bushes flowers weeds were all
the same to me back then
things green woody bright or dead
contained within three walls
we lived in the city
shared a house with other families
though the war was over
several years before

An angry sound with no pause at all
between the lip-pressed consonant
and the gush the release of fluid
the non-stoppability innocent enough

when it led to the whistle in the little
passageway my parents called the kitchen
the short window-less hall connecting
our shared bedroom to the front room

It's always one of those days you find yourself
gently winkling some imaginary debris
out of the corner of your right eye
I suppose when a sleeper comes away
on the tip of your index finger
that's reality and you can move on

when I was a kid I read that Crusoe
kept track with marks and when his
indigenous friend aka the slave turned up
he was named Friday

It repeats until you drag yourself reluctantly away and begin the search.
It's not in the receiver not in the basket with the remotes nor nestled down
in the cushions of the couch maybe there's time to find one of the other three
the one in the study oh yes still in its cradle a curious name for something
small black and boxy that bawls out its electronic repetitions until you
feed it with your now, your center shifted to another moment...
Thich Nhat Hanh all those letter Hs there for breath he says Thank you

I say these things happen
at night while we lie sleeping
in the morning green rain
picked and gathered

Circle of wicker on the doorstep
open up by twisting and letting go
step out into another turn of the planet
face into the sun even with the clouds
between always something gathering
collecting and passing through

Evening on the Suez Canal and not a pint of Guinness to be seen
the dark peat strain of an Irish night locked up tight
between the ears a blood red beret keeping the lid
on stars come down to look out from archways and porticoes

rooftops too you might imagine Oh the cream at the top
of a glass sure isn't it the imperial pint you're after
well isn't it the imperial pint of oil that brought us here mate
and what are we doing here at all dressed up for a cold

One follows salmon with single malt scotch and sets aside the small square glass
on a square of Brazilian quartzite all sounding very exotic for effect but it's the world
you know so don't go raising your eyebrows just accept the miracle our large

planetary group represents and get over it, under it, through it, I've said it
all before the prepositional prospecting we need to claim but the point is
smoky boxed up salmon good till 2016 can you believe that but cut into

Sometimes getting from a to be can be so what was the word she was looking for? dreamlike.

She left her car unlocked without looking back and cut across the road through the haphazard morning rush hour such as it was out in the sleepy town thinking to herself the so-and-sos never pay attention to crosswalks anyway. She reached curbside where the coffee shop regulars had vacated table and chairs on the edge and pushed back under the overhang.

Some dreams are so tactile the bed falls away
the air in the room loses ambience and any chill
of waking in the dark

— some dreams find the center and turn the whole of you
inside out without you knowing it
what do you know anyway
what's forgotten reappears
reminds you it's showtime every time
and the wings flying system substage
and of course auditorium are occupied
each pair of eyes turning their own
insides out in a kind of melding
that far surpasses your usual stretch of the imagination

Cable Knit

Her entry way was curiously empty, bare linoleum with no soul, only the small kitchen at the back beckoning with its sound of the kettle whistling.

Ah, tis grand altogether, she said, as I hovered on her threshold. It was the height of the three day fair that came in like a pagan carnival ruled by a great long-horned mountain goat and went out like a drunken flea circus—the smells of cattle and sheep at my back—the bleating and crying in the street, mud and piss spilling into the doorways. Only the dirty little children sticky with boiled sweets gave us any sense this was supposed to be fun.

WOMAN FOUND GUILTY OF THEFT reads the headlines. She took it. Something so big or so valuable it warrants a very big can't miss it boldface typeset layer on the left side of the front page. Maybe she stole a shopping center, pretty big. And if she did the news would read HOW DID SHE DO IT? or IT'S GONE! Maybe MOLL STOLE MALL!

Maybe a diamond necklace? Nah! Why would she steal something she expects to be given by the man of her dreams? Gucci bag? HAG BAGS BAG?

'Twas a water buffalo no horse
that Lao Tzu rode across the plains
Bubalus bubalis 'twas of course
ten thousand silken threads for reins

Tell me said the wanderer to the moon
how it came to pass that Lao Tzu's mother
carried him sixty two years in her womb
till she could go not one step further

White Space

There it is. Right here. Not there.
Take that distance in the form of the letter
T the man outstretched the road
with two choices and breathe
for the white space is here

and now a resting place
a place of letting go in the shallows
where the effort relaxes and the poet
sings through the spinal chord
and every guitar resonates

Plaza Inn, Ashland, Oregon May 29, 2011

Sound of the creek past midnight.

Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire singing in my ears—Oded Gross and Tracy Young's adaptation, that is. Once again, fabulous ensemble work—and I mean the entire cast, not just the song and dance ensemble who came in at key points like the girls in Little Shop...

She is a bead of rainwater at the top of the ridge pendulous on the new branch of green sprouting maple

She is the cloud rising or falling who can tell there in the canyon making love to the creek as it rushes through dancing over under and against the granite boulders still lodged happily where flood left them