Veins of stone spit out from scintillated mountains
Writing down the history of rain in beautiful scars.
Soon the sun, but first the birds

   In purple clouds of iron wood (I can map the day
by just the sounds) this peeling bark my
Hollowed past too.

Out of everything
Arises this life or
A single smile. And
The wind over the sound
At low tide, mud flats drawn
Slack. So I met you. Like the clouds
Far off the coast,  beautiful and dangerous, leaving as quick as you came. The sand
Leveled again.

Alone and growing
Small, this patch of snow is the
Flower’s only hope.

On the lava flow
A raven’s feather on snow;
Winter's quiet wing.

Well first you’d have to lose
Nearly half of your hope to just
Walk on the edge, then I would
Say become as sad as the thought
Of first snow, the dusk that brings
Winter and you may enter just far
Enough to hear the elk in alarm
Trample off as if they are walking on
Glass, then if you are brave and not
Afraid to die or have already died
I would say walk until the only thing
You see laying on your back is the
Soft impression of raven’s wings
On the canvas of this eternity/

I The Ravens

What spirit flies in fall the raven’s
Over mesa and on the wind
High above the valley of long light
And shadow, in waves towing
With their wings the seams of night
Tugging the tight veins of winter.

Against the wind, in pairs twirl
Like lover’s in the deeper woods, and
Shadows on the stone make four
But only from the dying sun.

II Venus

What pale star rests above the kiva
In dusk the last light is Venus wearing
A crown of waning purple light I know
I know I sulk among the junipers, like
A slug beneath a stone a snake
Within his hole I know the night
To come, the cold stars not so naked.

III So is Darkness

So is darkness but the desert of
Light, and just as long as sad?
The endless journey between the
Wall of pines, the dark oceans of
The mind, climbing toward the
Edges of the summit and declaring
The emptiness of things, fluttering
Just two beneath the newly birthed
Moon.

This morning on a walk
Propelled by utter joy
I couldn’t help but
Nudge my nose into
The end of a juniper
Bough bursting with
Crystalline rain drops;
Oh the emerald eyes of
Heaven I did look upon
And into, as the herbaceous
Tears flowed from my face.