Photo credit: Charles deGravelles

The homeless sleep on concrete under the bridge,
look up seventy feet to see the musculature
of river reflected as it weaves on steel beams.
 
Light cannot touch them in their shadows
except when moon sizzles across waves,
dazzles into eyes and lays its web upon
the flat slab of the bridge’s buttress.
 
Songs the homeless know: rain’s tempos,
dawn in a bird’s throat, fluting and arches
of possum bones, what the young bring down 
in restless circles as they trade jibes 
or go off in pairs to squelch gasps 
under bushes near the river’s lapping.
 
Against big odds, homeless sleep
with the roar of trucks above,
sleep to the gnash of gear on gear
on a corridor of air furiously ripped open, 
tire’s whine, the baffle of exhaust.
It takes a lot to sleep. It’s harder now 
to get the cocktail of booze and meds just right.
 
Once you drift you might get lifted back
to the place where you grew up 
along the banks of this river. 
Cane fields ran and flowed forever.
Ribbons off stalks rattled, drenched in wind.
Blackbird and crow landed, clung.
Dark feathers splayed in strong wind.

The woman I love loves cats.
She strokes them. The mirror
is a harsh, empty winter.
 
In high school I was hog tied, 
held down, branded, set loose.  
I solved that by molting.
 
It’s a tease really –  talents given, 
what is expected from these ongoing 
engines of desire. Reminds me 
 
of how I reeled after deep tongue kisses 
outside the dorm with college girls 
when they knew they weren’t going all the way.
 
Vast tides of fire rose from my thighs.
Then a flood of expectations. A wife
who woke at four to be alone. Was alone. 
Gave us two infants that thrived, left.
The children, I could not tuck
the children in anymore. 
 
I have something I lost. I want 
something others have. Tomorrow
is around one more hard corner.
 
This morning having gone out 
my back door after coffee, I am 
under the mammoth swirl 
of a milky aurora that spreads
 
after a night when the stars fell 
down by the millions. Now, while 
creeks crackle and hiss, I have  
one wheel barrow full of rain.
                        

Because thunder. Because branches 
are swept by wet wind. Because 
house frames in Houston steam
and molds form on crumbled dry-wall.
Because so many in that city are displaced 
to motels  or are on relative’s couches. 
Because birds are blown backwards.
 
Because aisles at Home Depots 
are still overcrowded as we struggle
to recover from last year’s hundred-year-event. 
Because the sun is about to be blocked by moon.
 
Because every time any statue of the looming, dead
Generals of the Confederacy that were erected 
to bring back tyranny is toppled and stored
under tarps, we hear clamor and outrage. 
 
Because I went to the hospital to visit
a friend whose eyes have gone feint. Breath irregular, 
labored as he lays tethered to machines. 
 
I am back home to sit like an empty glass
left out on the patio and watch phone lines
where I have seen rats trot in moonlight. 
 
Because the sun and moon are about to get 
things all mucked up there is suddenly 
too much space here, too much day
seeking balance until the city
 
closes its eyelids in the rain and sings
a song drenched in despair and awakening
in a voice of rich splendor.