1.

If there is wild moving water
there is a trout in it
waiting for the cast,

the whip of line in air
splashing a weigthless fly
on the mirror surface

luring the rainbow fish
to break the heavy air
for the angler’s fantasia.

                    2.

The Rogue is flowing
with trophy size cutthroats,
chars and steelheads,

yet the angler only feels
the stillness, the endless  casting,
the motionless standing in place

until time is forgotten,
his scheduled life forgotten,
what needs to be done next forgotten

only the emotion is left,
the heart of spirit ferrules,
the casting, the rod

with its wheel seats
made of rosewood,
inscribe calligraphy

in golden ink, shiny agate
guides in bamboo,
its garnet threads and

extra fine brass wire
in a five weight
ideal for trout fishing,

the anglers long boots
planted firmly in the stream,
getting lost in the ineffable moment

until the closing
orange hues of autumn
are reeled in and stowed away.

The earth is black
on both sides.
The yellow bus
taking the living away
passes pile after pile
of rubble, of signs that
were once there:
the Harley Davidson store,
The Rogue Action Center-
a nonprofit climate change group,
the community bank -
it’s vault the only thing standing.
Indistinguishable from the ash
is the mobile home park,
which once housed the migrants
that harvested the town’s fabled pears.
Only their metal survived the wildfires:
aluminum lawn chairs, a barbecue pit,
hubcaps of cars long since evacuated.
Among the stranded survivors
is the aged widower searching
impossibly for his wife’s ashes.
He had escaped and settled
here after the Paradise fires took
his previous home two years back.
Crows on charred oaks branches
watched and mock his effort.
He looked all around him
and wondered to God
if he had paid
enough grief dues.
When the bus stopped for him
he did not get on.

White and red roses
defend the mother’s coffin:
cherry stained,
her interlocked hands in prayer
draped in veil gauze,
her gold dress
the same she married in,
as the procession of her children
grieves in a black and white flow.

In a black and white flow,
each child lights a votive candle
that reflects the sanctuary lamp,
their tears and prayers—
hating themselves
for the gasping erasure inside,
the love not returned in time.

The love not returned in time
before the tears
of the blue ******
praying over her,
black hair
matching black hair,
alabaster hands
blessing burnt  
brown ones, anticipating
heaven’s restoration.

Anticipating heaven’s restoration
the congregation
steeple their hands and
chant for her dreams
to true,
her now
motherless children
to rise and stay united.

Rising and staying united
all her children
awkwardly cradle
their old gifted rosaries,
skipping Glory Be’s,
misremembering Our Fathers,
finally hiding in their tears
and the pale oval beads,

the pale ovals of their hands
buried in the vanilla scent
of candy florecitas
half mauled
in sugary communion,
their faith in confection
as strong as
believing their mother
would never die,

believing their dead mother  
would always protect them
even while the cancer within
ate her silence and resolve,
finally leaving them living
in a world of dollhouse sermons
and scented flowers with thorns,

scented flowers and thorns
and death marrying death,
matroning childhood,
life in its very pinkness,
child to mother to father

father to mother to child,
until night falls into blackness,
to black rot dusting
even lion and lamb,

lamb and lion
consecrated
to the last letter,

the last letter
of God’s tears,
the tears of now,

until now the tears
are nothing
but the chants of cries,

the song and chants of cries
born sober in the now
and the chant of tears

the tears of chants
and the children kneeling,
others kneeling,

kneeling others,
until there is
only the fall,

only the fall
of kneeling
in the now,

now in the fall
of kneeling
for love of each other

each other now in love,
or thinking they are in love
now with each other,

each other now in love,
knowing they are now in love
or soon will be.

The memory monster haunted Mavette on the 
platform, the gym, pass the graveyard,
scolding her for leaving the tiniest 
remains of food on her plate, scourged 
her for reading that ***** Jew, Levi.

The swastikas chased her in her dreams.
In her hole in the earth the dogs and 
stamping black boots would pass over her.

She lived with that history everyday,
escorting curious, mournful tourists
through the remnants of Auschwitz.

She knew all the ways of death, could 
recite the roll of who died and lived
over, over until the loop was her life.

Her sister in Detroit would receive 
a postcard from her every week 
with the name of a Jew gassed 
and a list of their left overs 
that were burnt or sold during 
that particular time of the war.

Her sister never wrote back
and sick of receiving this 
unsolicited ******* and 
emotional ***** would 
unceremoniously match 
every neatly written note.

Today a bunch of high school girls
were pleading with Mavette
to put them into the chamber 
and turn on the gas for they 
all wanted a great TikTok moment.

Mavette was tempted but
that was never allowed and 
the echoes of their laughter
followed her and ruptured 
into a migraine by shift’s end.

The next day, a squad of Israeli soldiers,
in a moment of exposed reflection 
after crying and singing the Hatikvah
whispered to each other
“That’s what we should do to the Arabs.”

She was only a little ashamed 
to share their thoughts,
these children and young men,
enraptured by the practical thinking
of those exposed to the simple, 
recreatable reality of the 
**** killing mechanism. 

The next day she did not rebuke
the teenage boy in the brown shirt
who said: “In order to survive 
we must become a little **** too.”

For once she wanted to escape
her hole in the ground and 
be the one with the dogs and guns,
be the one with all the power. 

if she could not escape death in her dreams
she could live by becoming death in them.
Mavette, the Angel of Death—  the idea 
comforted her nightmares and dreams.

And she took her gun and 
locked herself inside the chamber and 
asked those outside to turn on the gas.

The sand holds our faces.
Every thousand grains
forms a man, a woman, a child.

Every millionth there is your mother-
young, stunning, beauty mark
perfectly spotted on right cheek.

Every billionth adds a little weight,
gray, tears and beaches of separation.

Every trillionth might be the dirt
blown away at her funeral.  

It’s not hard to find a thousand
coffins nesting in the shoreline.
You just need to adjust your eyes
to focus on the tiny-ness below,
to see every relative particle.  

Sand is but the erosion
of the once impenetrable.

You may find your father
coasts away from your mother,
his bald-headed frown
etched into a tableaux
of a thousand grains.

The semblance of
your sister’s smile
and your brother’s jeer
not embracing each other
are also there,
shifting closer
or farther away,
based on the whims
of tide and wind.

Your history has been
etched into the grains
centuries before your birth,
yet your fate remains beyond
their sway and maybe even time.

No  one can explain
why vast deserts exist.
Why their very ash
is forever tendered
and remembered.

All we know is that
the shifting sands
will be there to always
greet and bury us.

You worked hard for the plum,
to bite into the Mariposa
before the heat comes
and it rots.  

Its purple plumpness
pulsates with juice,
so dark and clear
through and through.

The comfort is not startling.
It’s the taste you know
from a thousand memories,

What takes you back
is the shock of seeing
your heart in your palm,
the taste of your blood rich
in this other thing.

Yes, it’s not what you hoped,
maybe more for such
a late summer surprise.

Yet, in the shrinking light you
don’t begrudge yourself
this small purple reward for
a lifetime of regrets and doubts,
unborn hopes and still-born pleasures.

This plum blossomed
despite you,
apart from you.
 
It reached you
skin sweating
ripe to be your miracle.

It’s not just sweet,
it’s sweetness,
full of the seasons
of its short life,
your everything- nothing joy.

Bite into it, and
you must bite into it,
taste its smallness
in your fullness.

Feel it run
down your cheek
overflowing your palm.

Feel it mesh with all
your runny happiness.

I watched in the swirl, the blue fish paddle
steadily away from the boat,
knowing that it had been hooked before,
the wound protruding wormlike from his jaw.

Today would not be his last fight.
He would not be a photo prize.
He wanted not the weight of air,
just the restless, endless flow all around,
the homely tide.

Algae speckled his skin
refracting rainbow fingers
like prayers in the morning
and brown moldy spots on his lateral line
like vespers recited in a dark nave.

Swirls of lilies flowed beneath his belly
revealing his antiquity and mortality.

He danced defiantly along the reef,
shedding embedded sand,
corrupted water weighing him down
the worms wriggling on barbed Js above,
the anemones gesticulating alluringly beneath.

He once was suspended between ocean/heaven
everything green slipping off,
his blue mocked by the lighter sky,
his lungs rejecting its oxygen,
his blood rejecting its gravity
that cut his very being.

He was born with scales,
flexible bones Ill-suited for this rigid world,
born to glisten never knowing.  
more beautiful peony’s,
things more lovely than him
rooted in lands beyond his sight and ken.

His eyes seemed larger than mine
and in a certain graceful way
they had the heavy density of a stain glass panel
trying to contain all beauty in an icon.
They shifted only towards the light.

He stared mouth agape and every scar,
every hook wound fell off, revealed itself,
proof that he will never be any one’s prize.

Like everyone else, he had learned
the wisdom of the wound,
that life was not in victory,
but in surviving, the possibility,
the hope of catch and release.

I started my rusty boat
and in the dart of his rainbow
swimming away, swimming away,
I felt the thanks of his fin and tail,
as I moored in the direction home.c