East of the coastal highway
where California is burning,
Peter Lang uses a shovel
to save the wildlife preserve
but can’t do more for the horses
on Hood Mountain. Thus crows,
ravens, and sparrows swoop
down to Bodega and its church.

What do I know of how it started?
What do I know of defensible space?

I was once a child, playing with matches
behind the pumphouse and the brush
caught fire. Mother called me a hero
for using the garden hose to put it out.
                        

My doppelgänger
was scheduled to read
about the night he’d gone looking
for his lover in Dogtown.

But the barista said when he
happened upon her, she was shooting up,
laughing at the poem he dedicated to her.
Crushed, he jumped from Jesuit Hall.

Delusion behaves badly when it visits.
The last time I saw him, we cracked
a window open to smoke crack. A smoke
of pestilent fever filled the room.

Let’s climb to the seventh floor
and calculate how long it takes to fall.
                        

Here in the redwood forest
the owls swivel their heads,
they close their eyes,
and here’s the last of moonlight
sifting through the ghosts
of my hands. This arched haunt
susurrates a story—once upon
a time and far away

a bicycle stands
by the Mississippi, its trunk bag 
packed with the bleak of uncertainty,
and inside the vault of St. Louis Basilica, 
three stained women in robes
of Tiffany glass whisper let it be.