The Appalachians exist in their eroded presence,
peaks grinded  down to almost lower hills,
erasing the mountains once majesty
to a smoothing, a faded promise
of God lost in time’s neglect,
barely seen in flyover.

These mature mountains once outreached the Himalayans,
the younger brother barely beyond its grasping infancy-
(older even than the dozen watery icy rings of Saturn)
ceding  a layer of itself every natural  millennium,
to the red oaks and pines that rule its base.

These crags once knew the seasons when the flowers died
but now know  only black bear, white-tailed deer,
wild boar, fox, raccoon, and  ******, below;
the golden eagles, ravens in the cliffs—
the schoolchildren,  hikers, climbers
who wander its ancient trails,
seeking  the orology of  stone  
vanished in decaying time.

It’s Brown Mountain Lights hold tantalizing  human mysteries-
unexplained orbs drifting through shadowed peaks,
silently piercing the fear veil of the mortal  mind,
whispering ghostly rumors through the pines,
ethereal terrors shrieking down the cliffs,
a secret eternally lingering in its air.

The Cherokee call this sacred sinister Land of Blue Smoke Shaconage-
made by the giant hawk Tawodi wearily circling a flooded earth
which plummeted to the ground in exhaustion.
Where its vast wings hit Elohi (earth)
the mountain valleys appeared.  

Now the Appalachian twilight whisper echoes of Wampus Cats
patrolling the woods, protecting with legend the mountains
from the minds destruction that  broods beyond itself.
The mothman watches from the Tennessee’s edge,
its wings unfurling in the foreboding dimness,
a silent sentinel guarding present and past.
From the other bank Old Joe Clark fiddles
his mournful tune of abandoned paths
and forgotten times.

(after Richard Blanco)

I barely remember myself in the sway of these palms
Fifty years on I’ve lost the language of these breezes
along with almost all my childhood Spanish.
Good Morning, Buenas Dias
runs into Good Night, Buenas Noches.  
I can no longer live out the passion of my youth
without cancer intruding some melancholy lyrics.
On the good side—my poetry gets
the balance my present  can’t achieve.
The two are my loyal loves,
mournfully-joyously kissing my feet
as I stroll this shoreline and glance back
to see my footprints washed away in the tide line.
The salt air provides no salves— just stings,
forcing me to live with all my joyous regrets.  
All I’ve done right or wrong
lives with enough and not enough.
Who am I?  What should I do?
The always answer:
everything and nothing.

Skin


I felt the skin of my father—
his thumb a soft shawl
that enveloped our
intertwined hands.

And when the embrace broke—
how my tiny fingers traced
the moss line of his skull
until it became a familiar garden.

How he would embrace mother, after-
wards in her floral gown, so tenderly, that
I would sneak in later to smell the
trace of his skin on her every thread.

After they both passed away my grief
prodded me to smell his (and her) gonenes
on my body, their last skin living in
hard, heavy knots on my face and  hands.

At  night, in the skin of sleep,
he (she) tumbles out in a
nub of bones, his (her) memories
crawling on my skin, an open wound.

(After Ella Wheeler Wilcox)



Love speaks:
in the youthful flush of the first true kiss
in the shy averting eye that hesitates
to take this beautiful moment in
without fainting.

Love speaks
In the silent reserve
of the heart’s tremble
the still and ache
of hidden emotions

Love speaks
in the ghosting of nearness
the unshed tears that  fears
the  expressing of joy
that the breast barely contains.

Love speaks
in the humble spirit
that traces the tender light
that falls on the contours
of their lover’s face.  

Love speaks
in the wild words of purple poesy
that heightens the fire
the lightning and the mighty storms
that speaks the untrue truth
hidden in the

delight  
pain
madness
bliss
the rapture.

In my late hunger I listen to the swirl of night traffic, until
it dies around the curb— recedes into remembrance,

to that melting space inside— the sound
matching the tempo of my lowest need,

getting lost in the evening’s reflection—
ice memories melting to water,

everything moving to my traffic flow—
to the single track of my inside voice.

Exhausted, endured,
my  veins
touch the moon's hope—

this faded celebration
that keeps clinging
to possibilities beyond—

amongst these pallid faces,
silent companions,
the burdened

looking down this
sterile room,
pale walls,

who surrender
to sleep so easily,

unheedful of this
moon child

listening to only
the comforting whisphers
just ahead.

1    
I eat thistles to do away with
my hunger for green life,

capturing in pixel ****** what
my prying eyes can not evade.

The forest offers no inheritance,
every branch has its best name


                          2
I wish to learn and know the work
songs of smaller, silent things,

blend not into the shrubs but rocks,
the mutes of this dry and dying land,

join the procession of farmers mourning
the lost voice of closeness to the earth.

                          3
These hands that  no longer clasp or
knead are but the repeated gestures

of an uvulating tongue that knows
that the egg in a pool of oil will

yield a dry dough of double thistles
in the purple slanted sunsets to come.