Like wild oats
the lonesome poets
grow in the ditches
alongside back roads
and when it rains
they drink too much
like the low cotton
in dry fields forgotten
by dirt poor farmers
whose wives run off
with the first stranger
who wipes his shoes
on the porch before
selling her a pretty pair
of green lace underwear
like a bird sick of its tree
dreaming of new leaves.

I recall sailing sticks in front yard rain pools when I was young
Box Turtles leaving their wooded cover for the cool afternoon reward
Insects of every size and shape on starry Summer night porches
Pungent , wetted tilled earth on June mornings

Seeing the volcano from below
just another mountain
but this mountain
speaks of the earth disgorging
its molten guts
of lightning arcing
in ten zillion volt flashes
of God's terrifying grace
of geologic upheaval
that happened before anyone knew
anything about God
that happened before anyone knew anything

We were kids on a
long weekend
decrepit jeep pickup
camper shell over the bed
we stopped for an old Indian woman
and her son
hitchhiking
I remember the strange musky smell
of her
sitting by me
on the truck's bench seat
like food I'd never eaten
or a hand-me-down blanket
from the last century

We camped at Green Lake
and green it was
set out the next day
fully unprepared for our climb

But our young limbs
carried us to a precarious summit
the South Sister
nothing but sky all around
and dreams
distant peaks
the sleeping volcanoes
of the Cascade Range
stretching into the vastness
of north and south
Such peace

And here
now
I drown in
a deep web of tangled memories

Vistas I once surveyed
live and breathe in my mind
people I once knew
still whisper in my ear
though they are long dead

How do they live on?
Who tends these grass-grown graves?
Who speaks for these dead?

And where do these memories go
when we die?

He's a small black man
from Baltimore County
brings the witching hour
always craves a meal
or two.
Thomas.
Treads like Neruda's doves
on slippered feet.
Flicks his tail
and tales are told
the galaxies turn
Baltimore disappears
in the rear view mirror.

My man
my dark sprite
of hunger and thirst
first and best
Cat.