I look into their eyes
and try to convey
the importance
of heartache.

The stellar moment
when two eccentric orbits--
what I said
and what I meant to say--
align.

Standing in freezing drizzle
he held a sign that said,
"What if?"

The year’s first robin
flares on the lawn:
a matador’s capote goading
another headlong tilt
into spring.

On the third day,
         you begin to trust
this new feeling;
         you step outside
and soon
         you are running,
participating fully
         in the ruckus of life.

This Ziploc bag contains the magic
fruits of Hondo Canyon--garnets
and fairy crosses and the few
remaining shards of the pottery
in which someone once
tried to carry it all away.

I wake up with a sense of well-being
and wonder if I am dreaming;
then I realize that, little by little,
my self is coming back
despite me, despite everything--
my sexual, loud, obnoxious self
is coming back and it will be
generous again--I will be très généreux--
despite this world and
the tight fists of time.

The Architecture of Daydreams
Utopia Parkway
Powers of Ten
What Are You Looking At?
The Infinity of Lists
Dawns + Dusks
The Gorgeous Nothings

"Look," I tell her at 4 a.m., "I need sleep,"
the muse rolls her eyes in disgust--I say,
"I've had a damn notebook tucked beneath my bed
since I was 14, and where were you then, huh?
I wrote this poem and I'll write another,
with or without you--I created you,"
I fairly shouted, "and I can take you down."

It can take a lifetime to recover
from the effects of achieving
a terminal degree.

Though her past was etched
on her forehead, she refused
to let it define her.

The disorder is part of the design--
the first half of every minute,
dust on the screen,
the second half,
stars in broad daylight.

Tomorrow is the day of peeling off yesterday,
the muse says to me at 3 a.m.; through tired eyes,
I say,"I didn't summon you--I don't need you
and actually I don't want you riding around
on my shoulder, breathing down my neck,"
. . .at 3:05 I tell her, "Go bother someone else
now, someone who wants and prays and begs for you,
and if you think I'm giving you credit
for that first line, you are dead wrong."

From Point No Point to Useless Bay,
reports of whales breaching,
like grey-flanneled doormen,
anxious for a break in the weather.

If she looked at spring as an answer,
she knew she would be disappointed.

We were three generations
that spring, heading up
Hondo Canyon, the road,
the signs far behind,
depending upon nothing,
not even the sky,
a deep, serviceable blue.

Had the world stopped speaking to her--
or had she begun to avoid its truth?

After the enlightenment,
the laundry,
so I’ve learned,
but this morning
when I open the hamper--
nothing.

Early morning weather
sets the tone for the day:
the color, today, is
forgiveness.

This island glow
would be impossible
without the black
light of fog.

Today, there is a veil of clouds outside my window
that holds me down, makes it difficult
to breathe.

When I fix my gaze, the smudge
of bloody feathers on the window
becomes the ruby-crowned kinglet
returned to its perch in the cedars.

How to learn the names of all the flowers of spring?
It seems so very important, now, to know
the names of each petal and leaf.

No more philosophizing
for our ancient alder--
last night’s storm revealed
its new and proper placement
on the other side of the road.

Crazy-healing sun
nudges clouds aside
just in time.

The heel’s the perfect peen
for breaking up
what’s left of winter.

In fevered dreams I struggle
through the bayou of my youth;
the ghosts lie prone before me,
weeping.

A goldfinch patiently
feeds its mate
one syllable
after another.

I pretend to be deliberate:  I press
the amiable tufted skin of an orange,
smell a fresh cantaloupe, and wonder
if everyone is misrepresented by the way lines
break their young skin.

The engineer as amateur astronomer
knows how to make the cold connections,
nailing the line from eye to scope to sky,
but when he turns to me and says
I have the moon for you
the frozen stars wring out
a silly, sentimental tune.

I listen from your lap as your heart
taps a story on my back:
who you are, who you are not.

That that should be the word
to start a poem is purely random
and welcome in a day resisting
even this much explication.

When you are dissolving a knot, sometimes
your brain must tell your body to get up
over and over. . .your body may not listen
again and again. . .the room complains
of disorder by flashing it in your eyes,
leaving you no choice but to close them.

The hummingbird is taken in
by the deception--its mate’s breast
rising and falling
rising and falling
in the exuberance
of decay.

The sun came out this morning
to melt winter from the rooftops
and breed icicles on the eaves.

Even the hackberries, huddled
in their shelterbelt, exhausted
by nymphs and August heat,
still manage to raise their brooms
and ten thousand tiny nipples, galled
by their invisible marauders.

There is no audible click,
no thunderbolt, no earthquake;
in fact, everything looks the same
as it did the day before--but one day
you wake up and know you are probably
(it's still hard to admit) an old person. . .
it's quite dizzying in its reality,
then, it's pleasantly calm.

A raven ratchets
upward on a draft
watching Monday morning
struggle to grow feathers.

Just because a question
has haunted your days and muddled
your dreams         does not mean
there is an answer--sometimes
there are no answers      no matter
how much snow falls

The aroma of the winter kitchen
nudging the fog, drawing up sap
and a new blueprint for spring.

Cars and trucks stutter and slip
on icy, snow-packed streets;
skittish drivers grip steering wheels,
whisper prayers to the frozen air.

One more day
leaping into the abyss
with a bucket of rusty hooks
and a handful of beans.

How would the lonely endure winter's cold
if not for the promise of spring?

It’s lovely, that note you’ve been holding
all these years, but now try folding it
another way, see how that sounds.

Instead of looking toward the future,
I focused on the undertow
of the past-- determined
not to drown at the hands
of yesterday, letting
the ocean sculpt muscles
steady and strong.

Thirteen varied thrushes all look the same.

In the breathless cold, she made herself believe
that all creatures, great and small,
had found shelter.

Bewildered by the puzzle
of her loneliness, the marsh
takes one step closer
frocked in a clean layer of ice.

A sliver of moon set in a hazy sky on a snow-lit night,
the last half of the journey.  .  . we are safe and warm,
we are safe. . .and warm.

The forecast promises excitement:
“Winds strong enough to knock you about!”
Flurries tease and tumble all day;
errant birds crash into windows
terrified by the permanent now.

They say the last of winter will come upon us
as we sleep; tonight as we are dreaming
she'll dust the world in white.

The earth muscles out another rock
in answer to the night’s
cold announcement.

Pigskin and the fickle nature of the heart.

We are slowly learning

to make our new garden

because of not instead of

what’s already here.

The Arctic Blast rolled in across the plains
leaving sheets of ice in his wake. . .

The spider wraps its brilliant idea

in so many layers of silk

it no longer recognizes

the thing it has captured.