She was correcting
one
       by
           one
all the mistakes of her past
with an eraser and pencil
sitting in a bleak room
painted  clinical  white.

from the void
the mountain speaks
the beat goes on
in these desolate peaks

moss covered stacks
of sea floor and mantle
embrace and fold
in metamorphic tangle

stunted fir clings
graying roots exposed
a rocky, barren life
is all this sapling knows

snowcapped elderberry
scale the crevice
where bear and wind
make raucous passage

avalanche chutes
gracefully recline
in verdant shades
to the waterline

lie in the meadow
to calm the chatter
make still the noise
to blunt the clatter

upon the coming
of soft night
undress this silence
angel mine



*I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of 'thinking' and 'enjoying' what they call 'living,' I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.

-Jack Kerouac

I saw my future at the Dollar Town
today.  She shuffled, bent, a Sisyphus
who rolled her cart uphill on level ground,
resisting rollback grinding her to dust.
Perhaps fifteen or twenty years beyond
my age, or pushing ninety.  Hard for me
to tell; she labored so, with eyes despon-
ent, weight upon her arms, each step a plea.
I hobbled past her, grateful for a cart
nearby to hold me up.  The air-conditioned
blast a respite from the sweltered heat;
I panted softly, let my pounding heart
subside, inhaled a soothing breath, and sent
a prayer she'd make it home, get off her feet.

Extinction

Together they sit
Watching morning rain nourish
A dying planet

Together they sit
Swallowing daily reports
Attempts to save earth

Together they sit
Feeling gradual demise
Of their own bodies

When I am a thousand miles away
and you are seemingly a million more
here where I trade the sun for rain
dwell in the intermittent patches of grey
I distract myself in gardens green
study madala art of spider weaves
decaying, diaphanous maple leaves
the cool of wet mud wriggling around my toes
and yesterday the black birds watching me
disturbingly, the cawing crows
and I could hardly think or speak
as I dialed you long distance on the phone.