I have nearly 300 poems in public in many different places, both online and in print, in several countries from the US and UK, to the Philippines and Malaysia, Hong Kong to Canada. I often write on natural themes, showing our place within the grand scheme, based on my travels around the West.  Recently I have been responding to other odd prompts— stories of people and places. I'm a semi-retired English teacher in California, without a chapbook to my name. 

​Custody of the Eye
—the practice of training your sight to focus only on the meditation, task or prayer in front of you, letting nothing else in. But what if the object in front of you swims, dares swim away?  (On Looking, Lia Purpura, p. 135)

What the eye can gather— 
can it have custody over
what passes along the horizon
in views encompassing
sixty miles or more of air
so dry it feels yellow

can the eye hold the same
view as rising hawks over
a distant river gorge

can it preserve for itself
the feel of pink at dawn
when we register the first
light of day

how may we preserve
its intimate view, not shared
with any errant deer mouse
the breeze arriving from far
peaks lost in haze, our eye
suddenly unsure of distances
or shades

shall we glance down, attend
only our feet, reject the shapes
below— 

impossible to seek custody
we can only stand, let the eye stare.





An Air of Gravitas


No gravitas in blowing dust
with shredded cotton bits
whipping on the barbed wire

the gate here only a few strands
of that same wire on thin sticks
hooked to a nearby tree

there are no universal views either
in a narrow canyon with a sliver 
of blue sky overhead if you crane

nowhere are we responsible
for air, wind, storms rising
swirling clouds on the plains

there's nothing human here at all, 
ants follow a path past dry rocks,
the only motion on the baked road

deep below ground a hint of wet
clay, the husked old bodies
of locusts from another time

the heart now just a faint
rustling as of grass stems
too small to be felt until you

lie with your cheek in the dirt
ignoring thorny seeds, eyes
closed to the sun pounding

breathe the petrichor of
summer monsoons that sweep
over the distant gray ranges--

then you may see every grain,
twig, hue of red stone, hear
faint tones in the cottonwoods

the gravitas of beginnings,
views, possibilities, new steps
mapped into this hard ground
​