Summer night, sickle moon.
A whiff of skunk flavors the dark,
blows through grass matted down by cats            
pleased by the lack of grooming.
 
The ficus drips its sap on Big Blue,
your Chevy workhorse resting 
in the drive. Somewhere inside lit rooms
you’re cradled in the pages of a mystery.
 
Cool salt air blends with skunk,
nudges me away, even as 
light leaking through the blinds
lures me home.
 
August air tastes of autumn.
High in the sky the white blade dwindles.
How could I help but linger in the outer dark, how
long refrain from going in?
                        

An insect, or crab blown off the moon,
clings to cement on the harbor wall
while seawater boils a few feet below.
 
Inches above, ants run through their drills.
The creature’s long feelers quiver,
he shuffles jointed legs, but he stays where he is.
 
Does he feel our hot breaths
as we suspend over the rail, speculative
as seagulls after a long day’s flying over waves
picked clean of the usual meaty debris?
 
Behind us are the same bluffs Dana saw
when he sailed into this bay.
The old explorer wouldn’t know them now
they wear spool-shaped restaurants
 
but your son Skyler sometimes walks
straight up those cliffs in the dark
as though what’s named after heaven
must try to return.
 
Maybe the alien sees us 
with his useless-looking eyes,
maybe he hears the shouts from the nearby Pilgrim,
nineteenth-century brig rebuilt for modern schoolkids.
 
Twelve bodies hang over mizzen sails 
high above the waves
while orders shouted from below 
confuse them and paralyze this beast.
 
It’s hardly fair. It’s hardly what’s 
been bargained for.
Everything hangs and stares down 
 
while he stares up 
and the ants, the damned ants, 
refuse to descend.
                        

Ratty-assed squirrels 
beat the thin-skinned roof,
gallop the fence-top, 
stash at the corners
grapefruits, avocados 
too young and hard 
to leave the mother tree.
For a week a wizened globe
sits at the edge of vision.
 
Behind a locked gate
in a room full of light
I watch tomatoes climb trellises,
name each small fruit:
gordito, pequeno, manana, 
promesa de verano.
Hummingbirds buzz spiderwebs,
the deep blue morning glory bells,
tiny coral flowers on the goldfish plant.
I move through some deep dream of peace
and do not want to wake.
 
Outside the city goes on shouting,
on Veteran a man with cratered face
guides his bag-stuffed shopping cart
down paths that lead to nowhere safe,
no refuge. He inches forward, mumbles
words that are not words, seldom lifts
his eyes to others’ eyes.
 
Tomato worms make lace 
of the plant’s green leaves.
Cupped on the windowsill,
cilantro spreads another filigree.
Precariously I coax the sun, spread roots,
drop dollars I can’t spare on dirt and flowers,
answering summer’s call: expend yourself, 
make fruit, cold days are coming.
Jacarandas drop last purple bells
on everything, half their ferny heads 
already bald. I can save nothing, 
no one. Spend it all.