Camp October

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I never went to summer camp
I honed a childhood in the lots
The moon, if it was there at all, 
tied up other minds in knots

October was a lava lamp
Some other way that I could be 
A taste for red, a flowing wave 
Somebody else, somebody free

October choices had a price
A braver person had to pay
I packed my bag with higher love
A failure sent me on my way

Another day to be alive
Another path to pace the sun
October lights the golden fruit
A hand to hold, a turn redone

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Call to Prayer 


In the never silent city
the evening shadow spreads like a benediction,
the peace of the swelling dark
taking light's last minutes from the sky
like a seamstress picking out the stitches in 
a weave too brazen
Night air drops a tone or two
grows softer, sings a cooler tune
Plants are watered, children called 
The parked car lingers for an hour
half up on the sidewalk, no one cares 
Lights sprinkle a hillside 
turning a void into a constellation of humanity
only memory knew was there 
Night squeezes from the eye 
the remains of the bittersweet day
and caresses open the ear
like the tiny-footed crawl of the ant releases petals from the bud
The call to prayer blossoms 
in the dark





Into the Deep 


A valiant oak overhanging, 
well, everything
The low sun burning the maple crimson
as if some heat-seeking photon
shot an arrow into the earth's red heart 
It hangs, crawling along the horizon
Counting the hours by millimeters
Goodbye to the flash of all that easy-living summer stuff 
We go low, and deep, and into the marrow
to stir the blood roots 
and pull the point from the fiery center 
to light a brand 
and set a blaze
to remember us by 

Hang on, ancient fingers,
to the edges of things, 
while the oblate spheroid on which
we spend these precious days
burns off its skin
and cauterizes its wounds
Not pain, so much, 
as burned-back beauty 
bought by the inch, paid for in time,
the only finite commodity that matters
Each day slips a little deeper,
sears a narrower band 
of knowing

Oak is last, fittingly
few things so old
under the sun
Its great door swings slowly shut
when we're all inside

Done complaining,
we make ourselves at home

The grinning stump 
eats the acorns 
Will it get up
and walk to town?