​​Recidivist


A flower splits
unyielding concrete
 
and your smile
gently nudges
 
its way into
my harsh thoughts;
 
ah, the weeds
of love— 
 
they lunch on stone
and metal
 
and infuse scrapyards
with life's colors.
 
Previously published in A Stranger to the Land (Garden Street Press, 1997)

 

Epiphany
La Paz, Bolivia, February 9, 2009

Close to midnight there is a whisper
of rain, a low murmur of water
streaming downhill, an occasional
 
splashing of tires passing
along dim nearby streets;
I open a curtain, lift
 
my eyes to the mountains
where lightning's fierce scrawl
is written and thunder reverberates
 
among barely visible peaks
wrapped round in clouds and sprinkled
with faint lights winking upwards
 
in sprawling chains toward the Altiplano.
I suddenly realize that in this ancient
towering land, my presence is irrelevant.
 
Man comes and goes.  The mountains
define this place.  The storms inhabit it.
I am only a tourist, a passing fancy
 
imagined by the land and then forgotten.
All night I dream a vast sky filled with wings.
My throat fills with sound which predates man.





He Who Dreams a Life

 
No one knows my heart who does
not love the night filled with silvery 
moon, glittering star, streaking comet, and, 
above stands of trees, an owl ghosting.
 
No one knows my midnight mind who does
not see, hear, or feel wind, rain, mountain, 
stream, river, and ocean populating
the dreams which flow from night into day.
 
No one knows me who has listened
to tales of distant plateaus, dolphin and whale,
wolf and bear, stately redwood and fir stretching
to the horizon, and not imagined a life of travel.
 
No one can understand, whose heart is entwined in 
the daily minutiae of the life of man, why I am as I am.
 
 


Oxford Street, London, December 2002


Clutter ruckus, confined
chaos, cracked coherence,
a boulevard bedazzlement
where bodies surge and swarm
in shifting patterns of confusion.

Salvation army bands, marching
and corner concert, fill the air
with Christmas tunes; a few feet
away a steel drum band plays
island versions of the same tunes.

A boy sits against a wall playing
French cafe music on a diatonic accordion,
hat on the ground; change fills the hat
and scatters beyond. People step over
and around the lad.

A cacophony of languages can be heard
babbling cheerfully away: Russian, Italian,
Polish, French, Swahili, Arabic, Spanish,
German, Japanese, Tagalog, and a pocketful
of other tongues from around the world--

now and again English is heard, often 
in an accent which betrays the speaker
as being from elsewhere. Cars honk, buses
roar past, motorbikes zip between clogged lanes 
of traffic, pedestrians dodge in and out.

A light changes, a wind 
sweeps crowds across streets.
People scatter like autumn leaves,
reform into piles at next light. The clamor
(feet, horns, and voices) deepens,

reaches a climax, subsides
into silent streets of Christmas Day.​