​The End of Glaciers


In this fourth year of drought, 
even the glaciers have gone away, 
even as high up as Precipice Lake. 

Snow has melted today
that fell before the last ice age, 
before that land bridge formed to Siberia, 

which brought humanity to this world. 
It is an ancient water 
that has slept here since the time 

before we had hatred and jealousy. 
It came down on a continent 
without war and the idea of sin, 

and when we open our taps this year, 
we fill our glasses with a wisdom 
we have forgotten if we ever knew it. 

May we drink. May we listen 
to the silence of snow fields and trees. 
May we learn the peace of ancient times. 




​
A Memory of Smoke


Today, these mountains are full of the smoke 
coming off of the summer foothills, 
summer being the moment of fire in California, 

and we who were trained
about the horror of forest fire 
by Smokey Bear in childhood 

and then retrained to discuss the dangers 
of Smokey Bear as adults 
repeat our mantra  

that the fires are merely 
the first step in renewal 
or that they are clearing the way 

for giant Sequoias 
or any number of platitudes that are true 
but feel wrong way down 

in that part of our brains 
that we share with deer who bolt 
at the sound of a cone falling 

that part of our brains 
that want us to follow the deer through the fields 
and down to the cool valleys and meadows 

when we hear that the foresters’ plan, 
truly the wise plan, 
is to let it all just burn.





Dizzy on Moro Rock


Moro Rock juts out of the mountain 
like some buried god’s thumb knuckle 
and rises 4000 feet above the chaparral foothills.

If you climb out of the forest side 
and up to the top at dawn, 
you can watch its purple moths 

wake up and feast on 
whatever it is they eat 
while swallows dive bomb them, 

swooping over and over in a kind of dance 
of the morning sun. 
At least that’s what they did in 1980 

when my parents brought me 
in the cold dark blue light 
to show me what I could see 

if I were just silent and watched 
and of course the joy of that moment 
moved into my childhood legs 

and made me dance on the edge and sing 
my favorite song, “Salt Peanuts, Salt Peanuts,” 
until my father called for me to join him 

and we watched the slow motion explosion 
of a sunrise over the Great Western Divide. 
I suppose that nothing about this dawn 

has changed except for me 
who sitting at the bottom of the rock 
imagines the top and the horror of the fall, 

that three minutes of thinking 
about all of the things I’ve missed, 
everything I’ve failed, how much of myself I’ve lost. 

Falling to my death, I would think about 
how I grow sick even thinking 
about the cliffs and how I’ve lost 

so much of my hope and how it used to be 
that I could just turn off my brain. 
All of that, the dance, the joy, the loss, 

the fall makes my breathing go shallow 
and deep all at one, 
and I sit down hoping to regain my legs 

enough at least 
to walk for now 
where the ground is flat and even.