when the moon was full,
grandpa and I would stay in town past sunset
the road home good, with few ruts, the pastures soft
silver in all that lunar light

his team was old, slow,
but grandpa knew no haste
even getting to the cellar, when
great twisters came

born the week Lincoln freed the slaves
he not once drove a car, though he lived
to read of Sputnik in the Gazette,
and died when JFK was elected

summers lasted a long time
with grandpa--I still see him. giving reins
a gentle shake, reminding his horses to pull us home
whistling to them, telling me tales

on a July night, the year of the Crash
he put his gaze on the fat orb, barely waning
“one day we'll put a man up there,” he proclaimed
but I thought he was pulling my leg

“have to put him in a cannon like,
enclosed in some hard shell, otherwise
we’d blow him all to hell, gettin' enough power
to loose the bounds of God's earth”

grandpa didn't live to hear Neil's famous words,
two score years after that summer night; though I yet hear the shod
hooves plodding, the wagon wheels rolling, and his words
soothsaying, whenever I gaze at a white moon’s face

(the old man told his grandson)
that fleck of light out yonder is Venus
all by itself, out in the dark
can we go there?

would take my old truck a hundred
years to make it, and there ain't no air
what do people breathe
on that planet?

ain't no people, just a mess
of smelly clouds and hot rocks
it looks so small from here
and white, very white

that's light from the sun
grandson, and that tricks our eyes, even here
wait, grandpa, I see another light
blinking, going to Venus

that's a big old jet,
fifty far miles from here
but it's getting closer to Venus
see it, will it land there?

no boy, it won't come any closer
to that fried rock than we are to Mars
I see it, see, I see it, closer
even closer, blinking

I told you light tricks your eyes
I s'pose you'll figure that out later
wait, wait, I can't see it anymore
did it land on Venus?

maybe, maybe so, son
but I don't know for sure, it's just gone
*'cuz light tricks our eyes, right
grandpa, right?

the old cruiser sat in his drive
tires as tired as time, the whole car speckled
with bird droppings from his oak

back seat still the same:
scarlet blood dried black from
the boy's brief ride

justified use of force
the grandest jury decreed; still they made him
put up his sword and shield

the sullied car part of his severance,
his Crown Vic replaced by a fat SUV, and he
replaced by his own deputy

he knew it less was a blessing
than a curse, the cruiser turned hearse
gifted to him

the men had tried it scrub it clean
but the boy he felled was eighteen; his blood
copious, stubborn, and a condign reminder

of the sheriff’s last night as the law,
of his frenzied futile attempt to save
the boy, the “deceased”  

whose last testament was scrawled
in the bowels of the car that now sat still as stone,
alone with its red written tale

it never occurred to him,
not even late in the light of day,
he had paid scant attention
to birds

he heard the mourning doves
and saw a black ****** of crows scavenge
for crumbs at his feet at the outdoor cafe;
a crimson cardinal caught his eye, once

but most days he looked little
to the skies, and couldn't tell a wondrous warbler
from a fine finch--vultures and eagles were the same:
carrion eaters, high flyers

this, his avian compendium complete,
save hummingbirds he recalled outside his kitchen window
as a child, when his mother would bake bread
and fill the feeder with sugar water

the buzzing birds had caught his eye, until
his mother passed; then he failed to feed the tiny flock;
where they went he did not know, for he had little
wonder where winged creatures go

My lungs ***** at the air
As i plunge from sleep into the upper dream of waking life.
I shed the formality of my shallow coma
For the desperate climes of my striving ,
And surge the beach of lonesome
Brigadoons... Combing the frothy litter
Languishing along a stretch of forbidden
Waves...

I assume the sand castles are unassailable
And write letters for a bottle
In my mind.
And cork the
loss.

My symbols are fluid now
Here , where my days ahead are less than
The many days I've left behind.
Chains are broken and knit into my wrists
As i reach for the stars bespoke my Zodiac
I summon a swarm of loose ends
That begin with Me
And cherish everlasting, the long braids of Summer;
now derelict in the shadow fallen-
Coiled into mortal frames
Resting on fishhooks
Above the pantry of my feast
Of Hours.

I long for the turn of the *****
And the hothouse Orchids of my dim horizon.
The carnal hope, throbbing in my skull
As i awaken the giants i have slain
For their off wit and plain speech.

I return to the calm in my cliffnotes
That capture the purity of my bewilderment
And the honest scope of my Heart.
I go wherever the charm is broken
And mend the Angels there
That have fallen.
I choose to Live. And serve the Dust
A Cup of Sea.

another one,
Burma, Indo-China
steamy burial grounds
for pilots who lost their way
or were clipped from the sky
by the ****

unfortunate chaps
who were picked clean
goggle-eyed skeletons when
we retrieved them--all so a family
a million miles gone could have
a closed casket of bones

then we got orders
to head north, to the passes
that sliced peaks too high for
our biggest birds, too cold
for fuel to burn with air
what little there was

we landed at a Tibetan strip
more slush than snow, and hiked
the full day to the site, bags for bones
on our shoulders, **** for brains it seems,
since the boys we found were frozen
solid, crisp as the day they died

two of them, staring through
a fine cockpit,  dead as dirt, but
preserved by the mountains' white
air, ready for redemption while we sat,
smoked, and puzzled how to haul
them whole from the heavens

in this pasture,
one hundred days past,
scores cheered as the current coursed
through Bundy's body

this evening, I am here,
solitaire, except for my *****,
the cattle, and the fireflies sprinkled
against the night

my spaniel nips
at the flies, but they are quick,
eluding her jaws to perform
a brilliant alchemy again

amidst this spectacle,
cows chew their cud, unperturbed, unaware
it seems, magical lightning comes without
thunder from these creatures

the bovines don't scatter
as I walk among them--perhaps they’ve forgotten
those revelers here on a crisp winter night, eager
to celebrate an extinguishing of light

the shelters were full
surely that is why I found her
in the alley

she was as old and white as time...
probably three score, at most, though curled up
like a babe in the womb

her eyes were yet open:
what had she seen last, what had
her last supper been?

and where were the disciples
with bread and wine, with body and blood
while she froze on the hard earth?

sleep deprived five dozen hours  
I am on a desert highway, without a nickel
my thumb begging for a ride which wouldn’t come
until dawn    

but I don’t know all that dark is ahead;
I only know the night is moonless, the cedars
the pinyons on the far mesas are moving like mournful buffalo,
long gone except in my waking dream  

on the road two eyes are all I see
green, sparkling as prisms of light in all that black,  
electrified ***** of mushy matter, glowing in sockets
in a canine skull    

I fear strange dogs
and other fanged beasts--I pray to a god
I do not know is there, imploring empty space
and dark matter for salvation    

it comes when the lights of a diesel  
birth, rear, and shrink the shadow of me  
and allow my vexed eyes to see, an asphalt stream
with nary a scary creature but I

six and one I saw, doubtless  
others were in the reeds    

the seven sensed I was there, and made their
pyramid wakes on the pond’s surface  

before taking flight to flee from me, a two-legged,
wingless, clumsy giant  

what fat, finite clump of cells in a mallard’s mind
commanded webbed feet to stir, wings to flap?  

somewhere, deep in pink folds in
their perfectly sculpted skulls  

hides a memory of what we flat earth
walkers hath wrought  

skewering them on crude sticks, roasting their flesh
on ancient, mystic pyres

spending time with you is like
being cast eternally as a character in
a Terrence Malick film, a narrator dictating
our every move, our scripts unfolding
in slow, mesmerizing motion

someone always has to die in these tales
and question the almighty's purpose, if there
be one, beyond birth and return to the earth;
the time between being swallowed
by our eyes, undigested

I am ****** in as well, slowly, by the lungs
of our creator, whose exhalations come as oceans of light,
though high tides recede to reveal dark shores,
our inevitable demise, before painful,
interminable resurrections

we took turns toking,
holding the tent pole up
while the rain battered
the canvas

dawn crawled
over the great rocks;
a synovial silence
after the storm

still ******
we finally succumbed  
to sleep, for an eternal
minute  

until awakened by Huns
on horses, hoof beats ricocheting  
off the hard stones, echoing
in the canyons

worse than that thunder,
the eerie emanations riding
the backs of the staccato waves
from the beasts’ shod feet    

words flung from the riders’ tongues
slapping our ears, bedeviling our weary wits,
these time traveling tricksters, transporting    
us to a world at war

Hueco Tanks, Texas, July, 1969