The sky has skin it is boiling red
Above scintillating mountains of
Granite the sun is low, the
Sun is low. I sit below a cactus
And dream of when an ocean
Was your heart, with nothing
With nothing.

Dried-out washes blood shot
I walk I walk. Chasing the memory of rain
You were the only one I
Ever loved; clouds of my youth
Slowly marched and true.

Stars, oh and an owl
Hidden in a bush of thorns, within
The canyon, echoing like the big
Bang, spiraling out.

Further and further
The night retreats into the grief of
The day.

The dark city of cactus and
Wrens frozen now

Fear

Now and then
And every moment among
Poems, like mountains
With streams reach inward
And bend toward everything and nothingness

Tree limbs on moon beams
Leaps so frightfully to the edge
Of ever existence, only then
Will the shadows finally fear us.

Look at the stars, the space between
The owl and the deeper woods, why
Then would one begin to say
That this day, is far too short?

But a snake in the weeds,
beside the barn, sliding
away down the grassy wood.

There is a path that leads to the heart of the swamp
That navigates the land like a vein
Start out from the Oasis Visitor Center and head south
Toward the Ocean like a single drop of rain
Fallen from the ancient summer storms
Along the way you will become much more than yourself
You will become part of the swamp and part of the cypress
The air plants will hang on your flesh and the spider webs
Will break on your sweaty face and crawl in your hair
Take your time and become patient because things will gradually start to show
Like a dead crawfish dry as a bone
Or an apple snail shell floating on cracked mud
Here there is both life and death
And now you are beginning to believe in neither
But be patient because things will start to show
Like the red tongues of the air plant
Reaching out to lick your swampy skin
Or the pale ghosts of the Spanish moss
Hanging like questions from your arms
Out here you will feel miles from anyone
And the best part is you are miles from anyone
Out here you will start to understand yourself
Your complexity just like the habitats scattered
Mixed in pieces like an ancient puzzle
One minute cypress another minute saw grass
One minute sunshine radiating another minute shade.

But continue navigating this vein and you will reach the heart
Its beauty beating loudly now the green trees are pulsating
Around your blue lungs you breathe in the air and feel refreshed

The living green ferns are reaching out to grab you
Hoping to take you away forever in the swamp
The living green ferns are reaching out to take you away now
And if you feel like you are ready, let them.

All the ravens
at the end of February
gathered in the leafless branches.
I now know the sound of death;
it is deep in the throat
and sonorous.  

Then what happens?
The snow will melt
The river's will flood
The summer will open
Its reckless hands again.

Burnt out arroyo's
Of centuries gone
Melt before the sun
Goes away,  before
Summer does. The
Carmalized scent
Of la chamisa
Dank and old
Reminds me of
A smile gone
A dream remembered.

The windows of the world
Are open high and through them
Blow the desert air. Inside, on dusty shelves
The batteries sleep and dream of their
Childhood, poppies in the spring
And that deep dark forest of summer.
Light through the blinds through
The windows of the world.

Out there a dry and unspoken world
So much on the promise of one word
Upon waking, startled and shaken – found the day
Again revived.

Bat calcar I would say would be
Fine emotions of desert say the
Pinprick of a moth’ wings on air
Junipers in some hard time
Blue and cold was the air.

It feels good to be on the ground,
doesn't it? Laughing in the sunshine,
crying in the rain. What a feeling to
have, what a wave to ride. And all the
stars and all the minds and every single moment and more. Mountains crumbling and the river long gliding off into the ocean, again. The sound of thunder a flower in spring and all the dew, I never knew, of just how great it is to be alive until the moment I met you.

The third time I opened my eyes I began to cry
Midnight ferry ride silver full moon
Over black waves
A feeling beyond death
Following the blinking red lights
Letting the tears gather slowly

The white gulls diving like stars tumbling
From the cold cloudless night
(A father a mother and a daughter)
Her first boat ride ever
Perhaps the mystery of life exposed
Blonde hair blowing in the salty breeze
Her eyes open as wide as the Atlantic
--And to think in no time
She will be safe asleep in a warm bed
Dreaming of a thousand things to come.

This is all I can do to keep my thoughts straight
Ride midnight ferries to abandoned islands
Grey salty Atlantic silver rimmed islands
Where cars disappear into the frothy abyss
Where the newly paved roads lead to nowhere
But the blusterous sea where all is forgiven
And forgotten.

Out from the warm-depths of an infinite sleep
Away from the cob-web dreams of the night
Me and her awake into a reality and bath in warm sunshine

Morning breaks the horizon and now it is moving
Across the undeniable intimidating blue sky
Moving in colorful waves but in silence
Peeling off the shrouds of sleep around our eyes
Bringing life to our bodies and to the world around
We glide and smile through the tropical vegetation
But no we are not alone there are others also gathering
Precisely estimating the strange reality of this morning

And look, there in the water
A bird that is
Swimming
We all feel the damp of its black feathers
We all feel the excitement of its peculiar existence
The anhinga breaks the water and smiles at us.

And look, there along the bank
An alligator basking
We are taking pictures and we are thinking deeply
With every bump of armor a million years of thought
The alligator opens his eye as we walk away.

And over there
Another bird is preying
It is white and grey and blue and red
It shifts its neck towards the water like an exclamation point
And no sooner breakfast is served for the great blue heron.

And further on
Something is breaking the
Water
A hundred or more creatures of the canal swimming
Shimmering bright black and brown on the surface
The Florida gar is slapping its tail in the air.

And on and on and on the creatures of the morning stir
In anxious anticipation of the fateful day
An infinite amount of possibilities hang and fall from the sky
They are falling among the cypress and saw grass, and into the water…
And into us
And into us, holding hand in hand
Me and her breathing in the tropic air, fresh and alive
Taking in all that is to be found, all the possibility and truth
We continue walking along to the end of the boardwalk;
We can go no further…
I smile at her through the orange rays of the morning sun
And kiss her musical lips.

It is like lying beneath burnt ashes
A blister on your memory. Beside
The rocks two eyes open again.

The tired sky is so dry it breaks
And then melts together again
and breaks and melts together again;
at sunset I nearly cry
Soon the clouds will be like that too.

I have been counting down the days until
The earth begins to lean away again
From the sun.

But who has been counting down the
Days until the sun becomes too hot
For the earth to touch?  And what will
The sky have to say then?

The old man beneath the mesquite tree
Whose roots are shallow and wide;
It is him who has such thoughts so close to death.

Th
e horizon use to be
the youth of summer’s
l
ov
e.

Now, a misunderstanding
Between night and day.

I know it for what it is, the saddest thought of all stretched out.

There's a small stream that runs through a valley of white tent rocks
And i'm tuff enough to know that
It doesn't matter though I would
Say that the angle of the soft stone
Agrees to the gravity so casually as if
Or without any doubt the dead tree
Tbat hangs on so angrily will guide
Fate down the right path of finesse
You see you see

When you look at him in the face
You can see yourself, a horizon
Of broken mountains. His eyes
The stars, they offer no solace
To the long dark nights. His smile
The sunset, it’s a million miles
Off.

My bones, know this mountain range
My heart beats like an owl’s wing;
Soft, at the ending of a day.
Summer is fading, surely
Over the empty scabs of spring
And yet, a few flowers remain;
Penstemons and asters
Though their petals litter the sand
Like forgotten feathers.
Who then, calls on the wind
The moon, to transfer the dead
To the field of stars? Who then,
With strong bones, tends
To the living.

Above, on the bleeding cliffs
Petroglyphs illuminate in the sunset,
I see them, the remaining images, linger
In the last light.

Ignite these feelings I have lost
Directly, against the strong pull
Of gravity, drag them out across
The Desert tonight like violins.
And in the aftermath of death
After the flames consumed you
And your bones became dust
I went out beside the red cliffs
To hold you once again.
And when I finally let you go
In the summer, between my fingers
In the morning sun, I felt the flowers
quiver in the breeze, I watched the forest grow
deeper in shadow.

This star dust is litter
The last tree is hope
I held my eyes to the cold light
Of a burning cigarette.

A man with no legs
A mountain full of rain
Who then comes here
Without any pain?

Grasp all the open
empty branches of the mind;
Keep all that is wasted
In the warm sands of time.

Beyond the farthest horizon
Past all the known light;
Grows then, a simple memory
Of a sudden, single spark.

Laid down like a pine
after a mountain wind
after billions of years
the forest of space
is still widening

Sleet rain at night
From a cloudless sky
Was such a beautiful sight
To see you there smiling
Between the stars

Read it a million ways
The mountain says
In stones, please no more.

Beyond the last breath
From the last wandering ghost;
Appears a flower of no color
Or shape.
I go there sometimes to escape.
Beneath the ravished moss covered pines
Between the sudden, golden mountains.

Erase it all, the heart
The desert. Even the horizon
For me.  One two the stones
Fall. The mountain. For you
From me. Escape
Eternity. The short trees
Even in the fog of the new rain.
From you, to me. It all makes sense
To build a home, a nest. Goodbye
Flowers, time to disperse your seeds
For you, for me. Though I have travelled
So far, for so long. Stardust
Moon.
You ask how I speak so naturally
Look at where I have lived.
The desolate inspires. phew
. lllllsalin the breakdown bewty

Down by the river
At dusk, where eternity
Tiptoes like a cat.

I opend my cold hands to the old sun
Grasping a memory, I once touched;
A forest's edge, faded in the dark mist
Of dawn, oh sweet spring! Open your
Eyes, open your mouth and taste
The sweet decaying soil, the death
Of everything come to life again.
I closed my eyes and feel the sweet embrace
Of my mother and father, the unspoken
Love I came to appreciate; and all at once
Existence (the mother and father of all)
Became a solid, soft thing, while
Time quietly showered over me
Electrical and phantasmical.

There in the sun with eyes closed
And hands open, raised
I opened my mind; like a
Lighthouse on the rocky shore
Sweeping the broken, brash horizon
(and finding more than what was there).

But first the mountains
Covered in stars, the purple peeks
The emerald cliffs. The winter’s melt;
The rush and rage, oh at mid-life
That downward pull upwards.
The stream meets the river the
River sighs, red and full of clay
(I remember the day we met like that)
Full of fish and thoughts of…
First the moon, then the tide.
Onward through naked sand
Stone, full of compressed time.
The chromatic choir plays a
Crescendo, as the raven never
Really sleeps. Then the spring
Meets the summer dry and full
Of ash. How the ancestors came
Here to pass, that bridge and
All the distance. Down
By the river, covered in a deeper
Shadow, I kneel and feel
The river at midnight.

Wet stones
Tired bones
Flowers wet
Spent out
Though
Like stars
Gone first
I know
Because your smile
Soft like
A cave
Phew
Your headlights
On
The bats are hanging
My thoughts
Dragging slow
Soon the sun
White
And bright
At dawn
The fawn
Wakes too

The mind sleeps, slacken
Like a fish net hung to dry;
Catching the naked wind.

And I feel like I can finally sleep again
And I thank you for that.

This is the remains of progress
Pale dry dirt exposed in the
Tropical air rising out from the
Ground showing no sign
Of an ancient city constructed
No signs of life now but
Below below and out of sight
Is where the Crayfish waits patiently
In damp tunnels narrow
For a change to come.

It’s as big as this farm field
The universe, after harvest
Tufts of emptiness covered
In first snow. Only the breeze
Of the cold afternoon
To rattle any **** that
was still left near the barb wire
Fence. All the trees were naked by
November. I went further. Supernova.
Where once a glacier slid. Now
Cows ramble on the hillside in
The unfolding evening. In and out of
Light, the clouds are coming back.
The deep ravine is hungry for snow.
Dusk is a ruddy purple and above
The geese are flying south.
Near a frozen pond I watched
The night come on. A constellation of
Branches. A nebula of memory.
And I was young and
And the moon was old. And
Love can only stretch so far
Before it shatters or recoils.
I took the cow path back home
Underneath the snowy stars and past
The woodpile through the gate.

Spring, after all the breathless
Leaves have been covered
In snow and ice
(after all the tears have dried).
I feel the earth's straining
And touch its stone;
As light as a kiss
After a trembling wind.
To be bare and bound
To be ponderous and placid
(a forgery of entropy)
In these egotistical ties
Of passion. (in these empty
Tide pools)
Sensuous to even death's
wicked smile  unfettered
from the last embrace.

Moon like dragon eye
A dull yellowish red
Moon half full above
The distant mountain
Moving ever so slightly
Pulling the soft roots of
My mind, those in between
Thoughts, down. Moon of
Midnight's horizon
In the middle of autumn
Moon that breathes not
Fire but frost, tugging
Off the leaves one by one
Keeping in tow
With the memory of
When everything was one.
Moon of want and moon
Of waiting, moon of fear
And moon of relief.
Reflection and folly
Restless yet calm.

On January 27th, 2012 a life was lost
Along Highway 41 at 1:45 in the afternoon
Outside the Oasis Visitor Center
A women lost control of her vehicle
Corrected her mistake too much
And flew into the air like a nervous egret
The gas tank broke upon impact with the limestone
Cracked open I suppose like a frown
The flames ignited immediately
The driver was able to escape through the sunroof
With a few brave men pulling and yelling
I can imagine her thoughts as she escaped
And peered into the wild swamp and blue sky
Saw the green wax myrtle and the brown cypress trees hanging softly
The passenger however was trapped and within seconds
Died, she burned there in the swamp
Visitors from afar saw her life vanish in black smoke
86 years of existence taken away by the highway
That was completed three years after her birth.
(And of this line let us celebrate her life)
___________

And of this loss for a few days after
All were sunken with fear and uneasiness
All thought of how quickly life can be taken away
And within a few more days I suppose we will all forget
Her death and carry on with our own.

That the sun begins its life in the palm through the eye
That the poem must be ignited in the heart
That the poet must be ready to jump off the edge smiling
And the clouds of white move across the morning sky blue
And everything has a mouth and a stomach
That the end is only the beginning
And these circles I make with my mind have reason
And my bones will remain in the ground after I die
That the smoke will remain rising after the fire
And the whole ground was burnt in a grey texture
The green and the golden of the saw grass swaying tantalizing
Taunting the loneliness in my shoulders and arms
That the afternoon descends in a purple hidden
In the cypress until it too awakes cautiously
That the soul wonders alone in a watery forest
That the sun sets in an orange yearning
(I will not soon forget the feeling of vastness
An open prairie and the emptiness involved)
That the gate to heaven is locked tightly
But one can slip in backwards on their spine
And the moon will shine if it can like a pearl
Hidden in the bottom depths of space like a seashell
And the somber piano cords of the night descending
Can make even the strongest man cry
That the salty streaks are like rivers to the ocean gliding
That one never truly wakes, wakes from the dream
That the sun will rise tomorrow.

At our saddest, the darkest
Of the night, we find our
Deepest purpose, the
Ultimate cause. Slipping
In and out of shadows
You once again become
Nothing more than a memory,
Colder than the emptiness of space.
(The sun rises again)
It was with burning tears
I kissed your forehead
And said goodbye.

Riding on the. Bus in the rain
.up the tormented hill
In August. The people
Stir.like leaves. I'm
Leaving For the coast
Playing with my thoughts
With a. Stick. A lighted candle
Through the battered night. i go

Openly devout
The empty branches exhale;
Only the wind sways.

In fall, when all the muscles and tendons
Of the mountain are struggling
To stretch out their bare stones, and
All the skies are waiting for the soft snow
To fall from those darker evenings;
I saw you standing there beside
The opaque lake, quivering in anticipation
Of what is to come, begin. And, and if the
Weight is to heavy to carry, to burdensome
To bear, then lean on those stronger slopes
Seize the moment of despair, and embrace
The grief of here and then. In me you have
Within in me there is, a way down to the valley
Where the desert begins, the red clay yearns
In such moments as these, sculpted as if to say
I too am standing, still.

It was relatively nine
When I walked
To the plaza down
The sidewalk past
The bougainvillea that
Bursts out the fence
Like a volcano
To go see the pigs
That tip over
The trash cans
With their sense
Of smell;
And there she was
Like a ghost
On the bench
With sad eyes
Softly saying hello
Through the yellow glow
Of the streetlight
Behind her
And me being
Relatively shy
Loudly waved good bye
And walked back past
The church and
The old school
To emphatically sit
Back gaze back
At the past and
In thought with
Write about it.

It was never easy, no
to love you fall;
so dearly and deeply
as it was to sleep
amongst the tall
pines of summer
(that strong spine of fear)
but I will confess
no more or less;
that your scent of la chamisa
in the evening of half moon
was a chill my flesh has
never confessed nor condoned.

with all this noise
A flower
lover of light
with all these years
only minutes less
brittle, stiff
the wind
myself
a shell scoured
a lover
some
**** left
to grow then die
yet

Horizon doesn’t need a name
Not out here, the sun slips
Back again behind those mountains
Why do I always talk of endings?
She said, so petulantly with a
Cold whisper like moths
In the garden. The cactus have not
Had rain out here for months the canyons
Are still red as a beating heart;
Those caves out there they have eyes
And they hardly sleep in the day even
Gravity has a name even those
Cold dreams even the flower death
Has a name the moon is up
And the end is over, again
Horizon doesn’t need a name out
Here, the dawn has burst
Two baby deer in the desert roam free
Even the forgotten have a name
Twenty hundred souls break then
The surface shattered like a window
The desert lies open and free
I just try to climb mountains those near
Mountains but never can I reach the tops
The nerves run out splintered death becomes too real
I slip down endlessly and frustrated

Bluebird in the tree
Blue whale on the horizon, blue
Winter's shadow on white
Bleached sun song
Younger than time, the tune.
Here we are bird watching
In the space before love;
Strange how we read these rocks
The poetry of everything
We haven't said yet.
It's been a warm winter
The sky's tearing through
The binoculars, the soul;
Here comes the burning
Infinite again, like a slow wave.
Feathers ruffle, the day spins.

There’s no time left here to linger in this stardust
Any longer, the feeling is magnifying to extreme
The moon is low and quiet against the mountain.
And who counts the hours, the minutes? Only the lonely
Owl in the woods, only those beautiful, lost souls of the desert.
And like an old, battered lighthouse, our tender senses
Search the broken horizon for any sign of a white sail.

And then we say goodbye, despairingly
With the starlight still left heavy, within our eyes.

I think I see one now, gliding like some ancient memory
Through the fog, there among the breakers of my mind
At low tide.

In the springtime after death
Like a flower in the blowing snow
I know, I know the way
The world feels – tired and anxious.
And time, like wine grows finer
With age (Can you feel it’s
Booming heartbeat) can
You taste its enticing bitterness?
The long sonorous days
Of dusk and love are near again
And the future tiptoes on the quiet shores
Of that boundless, nebulous sea
Exhausted but auspicious;
Like a shadow in the wind

The thing about the future
It looks at you in the mirror
But you can't see it there
Smiling back at you like
A thousand sunsets at once;
But soon enough the time has come
Then it turns away and runs.

Beyond the mountain
Stars sleep
Free of prejudice.
In the pink light
Of morning the
Birds sing.

Yes, you think about those things
"The last time I bought this bottle of pills (you were gone)"... the mountain and its yearning. Knowing that the journey
Has been done, many times before.

I tend to stay as silent as possible when two minds interact
It is my camouflage
And the woven fragment of argument
Of ecology and war and more
Is overwhelming when the moon is so full
And the killdeers know not if it is a grey morning
Or midnight
But I am the last one left
Alone by the fire waning
While the embers orange dim off
And the cold creeps in from the swamp
And my thoughts begin to ignite
On the horizon of perpetual sleep

(But it is I who walk the gravel road in shadows
So deep into the forgotten night, into the illuminated swamp
Making sure the flames will not uproot again).

It could be as simple as a seagull
White wings enamored in the morning blue
Or a smile from you over coffee
Underneath the soft light of the green cedars
That draws our bodies from a hazy sleep.

The village stirs, the people come and go
We amble hand in hand down to the shore
To see the golden waves, the golden grasses
To survey the flood-tide rise to our feet
To watch the ocean dispose of her shells.

If infinity is just a number
Then this morning will surely pass us by
The flood-tide will fall back into the deep
And the sun will trace its grin across us
And soon our lives will disappear as well.

So we walk the shore and gather the shells
And place them in our small crimson bucket
Shells of purple, orange and blue and turquoise
Bivalves and lightning whelks and sand dollars
Wastes of the dead, things that have expired.

And so to us one day our time will come
And we will be washed ashore by the flood-tide
Our bones will be nothing more than swirls of calcium
Our flesh will be nothing more than grains of sand.

And in the morning the Gods will come
With crimson buckets and gather our thoughts
Which fall through the grip of eternity
Of which time can’t take away.