When love comes back to you, how
Many seasons will have passed?
Sun moon and mountain
Rain wind and snow.

What great silence lies between
Is now the reason for your happiness;
Though under no moon the vast
Expanse escapes you.

Look out into the world and see the
Fleeting colors before you I can
Tell you they are the clipped feathers
Of time.

Yes the mountains in my mind
So ever rising from the horizon
Of my past, of my future
Seem to know no star, seem
To crumble in my waking, constantly.
What if, what if love held no fear
Like death, the way the stream flows
Forward and backward (remembering the rain).
The mud sun where once we came from
Rose up from the desert like a bruise
Like a black eye. And I remember passion
In strained muscles, exhaustion and composure
(the birth of an infinite healing) what if
That's how it flowed, reluctant?
The closing embrace of tears.

We have gotten here because
We cannot remember; if we
Remembered we would not be here
The folded field gold, the brown woods darkening. So far from where we began those softer memories, like a deeper mist moving through the trees. The open window the open mind, free of fear and full of love, it was there in all places hiding in plain sight, shy and nervous. I dreamed last before death of the sun dieing in the winter wood
Like a candle before the breathe
Of sleep blowing gently
Blurred, orange and grey.

I've seen so many pass beside
My sharper edges
I've felt the eternal night
Beneath my softer bones
Flow like water
(Kissed the eternal light)
The fire from which I was born.
I've watched them come and go
As I broke apart, as the stars
Above and below exploded
Breathed hard, harder
Going forward and backwards
Like a dream, it was a dream.
I was a stone beneath a tree
A bird on the limb
A cloud, disappearing into the horizon
A wave or two across the shore
A fish, a feeling quicker than a flash
Of lightening, my flesh transparent
My veins deep as time
(And you there for a moment)
Stirring like the seed
That began everything
There along the path
Which you happened upon
On the way to the lake
Beneath the mountain
Beside the pine (it was in the
Time of summer, smoke)
I took a week, a break, to discover myself down the long road
Toward the southern heat;
It hasn't began yet though
Tomorrow it will.

Tonight my feelings have
Crept down below into
My chest; wanting to
Burst forth into the night
Like a source of great
Direct light but cannot.
Tonight, the desert sleeps
Outside of me but apart
Of me. Far off on mesa's
Edge coyote howls moon
Above in and out of heavy
Silver eyed clouds move too.
So empty now the tears flow
Like rain. Some ghosts
In my head again play the
Piano of memories these
Refrained and repeated
Until I will fall asleep then.

How your face can be so taunted
Your smile so serene. Said if it wasn’t
For tomorrow never would have been
Ever, fish and things. This pyramid
Is a black man shot dead. Take off
The cuffs take off cuffs. So much
Freshwater birds say when. Why/
So much death and death through
Throat pronounced words like air
And when. Snipers don’t choose
Race been banging bullets long
Before then, let me say alligators
Would eat your throat again
And again. Less gun

There she was
Beneath the ash tree
Wearing many seasons
One
Long sweep of her dress
Fire gold
In the dawn light
With the sun hidden
Behind the mountain
Burning. The leaves
Caught in the frozen air
Full of frost
And yearning. Her hair
Was red her eyes gray
And morning was just beginning
My eyes sliding down my nose
Caught off guard

The greatest memory of then was when upon the twisted edge. and sun receding in the West with reverie and joy was met. The fangled hand the broadened shoulder, only stars were to devour night the light was doubled dull. Depending on the eye you see. The ocean at my back, the desert and the swamp and all the history of man like walking in the rain. Fickle fallowed weeds in snow soon. November will be gone, but you and I will carry on; battered and beaten forgotten like the memories of sullen stained skies, banners of our innocence. Those deeper canyons beyond reach and somewhere, somehow, the path that was laid so long ago in this soft sand of mine. The river that goes forth

We all cling to the past
So tightly, rooted deeply
Into rock, breathing
Lovely moving through
The washes, the mountains
Have eyes too the moon
Looks lonely down upon
The cactus that begin to wake
In the ashes of the twilight
Out from the old stones
They break those chains
Like stars do far away.

Emerson I lost
A long time ago but
Whitman I picked up
The other day off
My bookshelf and
Read earth my
Likeness and thought
About bursting forth
Through the dreams
Though the night
Was dark the
Stars were cold
And the beginning

This is the nexus of never
An underlining sigh. Rain
Through the tall leaves
Tonight, tonight.

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

From a dream Cleopatra gets up and walks away again from beneath the trees in the swamp a thousand ibis fly away again, we think we know the horizon until death we, oh it is snow
The lack of rain, love on the last day
Either running into the pines or just leaving the island, we have that in common at.least

It pours from our eyes
From deep within our memories;
These tears of summer clouds
This flood of our existence;
Eating away at the dusty rocks
Grinding against our bruised bones (these twisted epochs).
Ah, the flotsam of evening!
In purple and carmine streams
Marks the path through the reeds; Through the diluted dusk
To the windswept stars
To the elemental island of
Now

and then there was a desert
A mountain, without name
The begining and then there was
A tree, with no roots
Walking about in the night
Searching for rain
And then there was a dream
And then there was a desert
A new slate a new mind to construct;
Out of dawn's light the stars
Just ashes, just an owl on a cactus

Sometimes
The
Desert
Sleeps
Just like
I
Smile
The
Moon
Rises
The tide
Higher.
Cold
Blue
Stars
Look
Out
Atyou.
In
Another
Time
In
Another
Place
Your
Face
A flower
In
The
Meadow of
This
Improbable
Heaven

I will punish my body
Like the mountain
Punishes me i will
Sleep beside the streams
Beneath the stars i will
Know the moon the

The desert is no place for poems,
Poems need rain. I've been smiling lately
walking more. Thinking about the horizon
and it's voluptuous curves. How the sun
Snakes, how the moon breaks how the stars
are born and die.
. I've never stood
In one place long enough like you have
Old mountain, on crooked knees.

You must appreciate the lack
Of most everything, lean towards
Death with shallow roots or just
Get up and walk away again
Or know the moon's cycle study
Sadness satisfy your bones
What I've learned even
The horizon is both true
And un true we must accept
Color and the lack of too
Accept the risks and be constantly
Pulled away and back pushed
Down like the mountains
Stand up like the flowers
What is else, silence and then
Tears love and love
Even a feather on lava in winter
Even a broken heart on the shore
The desert whispers but never tells
Not like the ocean he is too brave
Not like the praire.or the swamp
The desert is final goodbye
Between the brighter moments and
Death if you believe in such a foolish thing if you all this and less just to
Say how happy how sad i have been
Ask the desert the mountain the forest the swamp the plains it knows the same it the cold the warmth i prefer tears to silence something about salt and soon the lack of just get up
Just get out hours minutes days
The piano plays and then

This rock bombastic
Fallow fears real
Clinging like
To moss shadows
Even sun
In november caustic
Divide the day
Climb and descend
Love for
A time muscles
Pinched mind
Callowed flying
With soft strokes

Not long ago the black ocean
Caught my eye the deep swamp
The lonely desert, starting on the
Edges but moving inward.

The farthest horizon
Have you seen it? In purple
Sunset above the mountain,
Above love, above grief.
I have.

For the mother's breath
For the baby's rest. and the rain
Let in. But the ice is thin
The water's cold.
From the daily woes
The keeper's best
Sucha  reverie, well
it's hooked like a net on the docks of
Inside of me

in the middle of my life i enjoyed the waves something about diving straight through them which made it great

The wet haired lady
With big thighs out
Of the pool comes
More than tired
To see me in the sun;
Even stone's have a name
Even math has a
Heaven, pure desert
Lonely and lonesome
Dry and free of full of
Form and thought sun
And stars.

Hide all the cords;
Autumn has gone
And winter creeps in
Not yet
I say though
Go deep
Breathe
Fall
Back
In to place

Wet and damp
Are the leaves
Beneath the autumn moon
Hanging on
So carelessly
Free of fear
Full of frost.

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

it's beautiful to look back
upon the canyon ascending
nice to dance among the stars
drink the shadows of mountains
I've known love, even more
the great ocean sipping the shore
the great swamp reverberating
like a distant drum. To see
the trees in dawn's empty light
to look upon the deeper forest
walk among the moraines
cry beside the sea, on the
evening ferry off island
traveling far far away

In my head between the mountains
And the plains, those flowers
Of autumn how they hang on
Loosely like a tired mind
Grip onto the gravity of dieing
Yellow, purple and orange
Fall off the stem like a dream
Full of nervous repetition
Sun and moon and stars
Off onto the horizin slowly
To the east or west I don't know
Marching onward with heads hung low, so low the clouds become mist
Among the rivers of dawn
What have we forgotten to remember
Is love's ultimate struggle death. The sweet smell of frost the cold wind
Of change blowing against the mind
Like the shore at high tide. We have time we have no time. The low clouds
Are clear winter is upon us
Grinning quietly, anxiously.

If you could squeeze
A poem
Out of me it would be like
A cloud against a great mountain
A trembling of flowers. I know
The mesa sunset. The balancing of
Moon and spirit.

It was first a dark blue rattling
As dark as the deep ocean
Then turning brighter brighter
Creating silhouettes of the forest
--The birth of day stretches
In layered colors of silent waves
Now a sort of white pushing up
Like an angry fist piercing the sky
Breaking the shore finally
An orange layer pink to the south
Saturates the horizon and grunts and moans
The weight of a million years
The gravity of love turning and twisting

I’ve had this memory before.

--The bird wakes from the night
Without thought takes flight
Wings outstretched to the west
Upward and over the mountain goes.

--To a peaceful sunrise August 17th 2012--

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.

For many years now, I have
Thought of the concept
Of a single thing
A fox in snow, a hillside
Full of stones. I was here
And then there and
Couldn’t understand why.
For many nights now
I have been as lonely as a mountain
Listening to the rain. Wondering
In my sleepless rifts
Where did the days go?
How did the stars sway?

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.

Down the hill along the cow path
We stumbled like fawn shaking off
The heavy fog of sleep the gray
October day unfolding its onerous
Wings through the gate which we
Were always so careful to close behind
Us past the silver slender ash trees
Between that old stone house and rotting
Garden toward the barn where the swallows
Lived up the ladder to the hay where we
Could swing all day if it wasn’t for
Those dreaded chores which came
So natural to you, in the silo
With those pitchforks trying not to
Slip down into that spiraling lascivious
Mouth of metal (death), where outside the
Silver bearded god watched as
We staggered out like mice from an
Old and rusted tractor into the
Soft polished air of first snow, laughing.

the moon is a man who walks with open hands
down an empty narrow valley And
may is a way to say horray! here are the flowers
and here are the lovers, but don't be bothered
by the moon he's just and old restless spirit
(and spring is only a simple season) attached to the stern
of night's mortality And who is the me there
say in the waves waving so tiredly
so zealously but the you I and all of everything everywhere

What if, on the edge
Of oblivion
I spoke with golden eyes
Burning the horizon
Charting a new path forward
Through pain, joy?
What if, the mountain fell
Away into the flames
Of eternity, like the last
Embrace full of tears, sorrow?
Neigh, tomorrow the sun will
Rise, the clouds will grow
And in the thunderous chaos
Of this life, I will persist
Until the last word is spoken
The final breathe taken.

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.

A colorful glimmer of Christmas lights
In a dark room in December hid my grandfather
From the life he had proudly gathered.
Silence was taken as a relief from the rotting flesh
And smell of decay
Which had sank into every depth of the home.
My grandmother’s troubled eyes searched the
Room for useless words to fill the winter night.
Outside the heavens were covered by clouds
“How are you doing?” My mother spoke nervously
To him multiple times and in the faded dark he repeated each
“I’m trying the best I can.”
The cancer had slowly taken away his strength and
The wrist loosened around the faded arm chair which he gently sank into
The mutation made its way into a tumor over time
On his left cheek and his bottom lip hung motionless
In the flickering light of the candle.
Even with the form of dying
A shade of life could be seen in his eye
And some words echoed from the deepest parts
“You look older with your beard” he said
With a grin that showed us all that his time was near.
I left my grandfather with a bend of my body
“I love you” and a handshake that led to a hug.
His final beat was felt on a Monday afternoon
And the winter distance separated us.
I came home for the funeral and all the
Women cried and the men stood quiet.
The priest took a request from my grandfather
And told a story…
I was three years old and my grandfather raised
Me above his head with force
Quickly rising and sinking me into the air
I flung between his arms
On the strongest throw I flew above his head and into the sky
And proceeded down through his slipping fingers
His perpetual eyes looked down on my falling body
“Andy hang on!” he said, knowing I was perfectly safe
I must have been climbing back up with fear because
In that moment with my innocent eyes full of life
I gazed up toward my grandfather
“Grandpa, I’m trying the best I can!”

I imagine the wind
Being taken out from the
Sails. Or that moment
Before you fall from
Your horse. If gravity
Were to flip itself.
An empty soda can
In the far woods
.
I imagine
A piano by the surf
Playing an endless song.
A simpler bird.
Beethoven and the rain
Or. The worse possible pain.
What it finally took to love
And understand.

Let me be so overcome with joy, I wag my tail
Let me walk out the door as if it’s the last day
Let me let you walk me, even on a leash
Even if it means you leave me let me walk
East and then west. On the sidewalk let me
*** on this bush of grass let me smell this
Javelina ***, this javeline *** let me
Mark the small path I walk on earth over
And over again let me say oh this this this
That and that that, palm frond let me ***
Here I will walk beneath the new moon
Beneath the stars even if it means you
Abandon me even if it means you die
Let’s sprint across the street lets fly
Past the church, oh a smell oh a scent
Let me smell this blade of grass and be
Happy oh the fence gate oh the door!
Let me lay beside your feet let me be warm
(oh, and the dreams come let me be free
Let me curl up beside you like so)

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.

And when I go then how sad will it be then
When the eternal forest changes from night
To Day will you be there in the back of
The hospital crying then under a ceaseless
Sun of an eventual goodbye will it be then like
The far corner of the woods or will it be rather
Like a thousand faces you decided never to
Look at. Puddles of rain, patches of snow. Will it be then like a beetle on a
Slow day when the only exit was a door out
Into oblivion? I decide then not to think of the times
When I turned on the front porch light and you were
Just outside of view. Will it be then?
Like leaving, rather on a slow day in say march

End. We learn how to remember, through tragedy
And rise from pain. A tree uprooted
The soul shaken - a life gone.
The birds came and the birds went.
The stars beyond our view ramble on.
Tears are wet against the cheek
This winter day is dieing, this
Winter day is done.  Remember
To love without regret, it's never too late to begin.

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.

These days they are the crimpled up
Wings of moth nights, warm moon
Flowers of valley, mesa and mountains
Through layers and layers of soil no
Wonder they are attracted to
That eternal flame of desire, trembling
So far away.

I could read it all from the earliest of times
To the most modern i could listen to it all
The jazz and all the drums and the soft whispers
Of love, and I could see all the mountains and
All the empty spaces, to know the difference between the
Mathematical infinities and reality or could i? The
Mississippi in winter, the desert in summer full
Of nothing but non emptiness to think or know
The physical is finite
And I can sleep good tonight. I feel like propane
I feel like nothing and could be
Just a comma before the unknown
Following the amazing and breath taking
Without breath, spineless and speechless
The reaction takes place and does all
Not at all and even then it's up to opinion
If it all matters or even if matter exists
It could be just an illusion for all you know
Now

What is it about you?
You that rise into the
Onion peeled clouds,
That collect the cool rain
Like that and open your lascivious
Mouth to drink don’t you
Know it’s poisonous, useless.
You are no delicate flower
In a mountain meadow no
Swiftly swimming butterfly
In flight. You are only
Something strong, ugly
Motionless in the restless
Monsoon rains
Destroying your deepest
Darkest memories with each
Honest sip.

Back by the fax machine
Say in summer when the
Clouds are rolling in like
A head of cauliflower; I know
Whose prayer we dance to
By the refrigerator
God of history
And laughter whom chews
On the benevolence of sadness;
Plants hands with seeds says
The story of rain with
Out a word believes in more or
Less the scrutiny of an infinity of
memories, just the satellites
Of death all primrose at dusk
        and paper cut dancing
In his mind the plaza.