Inaccessable Areas Exist

INACCESSIBLE AREAS EXIST



I feel the pull of the lowering call

As the tide comes and the fog fills in.

The verdant bloom,

The coral orange and pinks of sky and land

Now blanketed with grey flannel

That wools over unfolded

From the cedar chest

As summer ebbs.



An abalone in a pail

So large and lonely and muted

In its galvanized prison.

Years of tiles labored on.

Bricks mortared up in ardent diligence

Hiding the iridescent glory,

Heaven's own light.

Hauled from its home

Sublittoral

By an eager boy who works up the slope

Bright and whistling

Through the serpentine,

The outcrops above the ocean

Where the Mendocino cypress barely cling,

Closed-coned and bending.



A flycatcher lifts and flits

Startled

With a quick trilling cry.

So small and then gone

To redwoods high.

Oh, grey-green passerine

Take me with you

On your little barred wings~~

While in rooms below

Buried in the black and white of night,

Ruby slippers gleam

And lustrous sheets glacier up,

Then lushly flow.




~~~~~~~~~

Atlantis

ATLANTIS


The flame I lick

Deepens as it flickers.


I consume whole towns,

Bricks and bridges.


Cloisonné paisleys

Hennaed with Sanskrit


Bead games and barnacles

Threaded with fishnet


Microfiche petticoats

Silica sparked and frayed.


I would take a lifetime,

Lost,

To explain.






~~~~~~~~~

In acquiescence

In acquiescence


Your once fluent saltine sleeve,
Now strangely inarticulate,
Thinly swathes the chair
Just there where the wild ginger
And rosemary fades in the air.

Your eyes close a moment
And I lean in to breathe your honey skin,
But I feel hot tears starting,
Tapering out of me~~
One dripping drop
& you will disappear

A friable onionskin kiss
And gone.
Recalling Shiitake on my tongue,
The buff pleats of your umami
Still unnamed, unknown.

Wood-lorn, I wait on the slope
Where the creek spumes frizzante.
Hands folded until the cream-crescent moons
Of my thumbs adjoin.
I sigh.
My thoughts carom off grey rocks
Falling finally upon a small upturned
Smile of a stone.
And I reflect upon it until the stream
Flows back to where you come~~
Your soft approach,
Your gentle love
Which so lightly rests on my shoulders,
Chirring.

There, where the dun grass mats down,
I reach around your trunk,
Your flinty shagbark,
And feel the warm sharp pant
Of the hart, antler-bound,
Strung up in moss branches,
In acquiescence hanging,

Slowly, slowly
Exhaling.




~~~~~~~~~~~

Rowboat

Mesmerized by the lustrous glittering beads,

the sweat on your upper lip,

damselflies alight and rise again,

spiral in a haze,

haloing~~blue green grey.

You keep rowing.

I'm handling diamond-backed snakes

and speaking in tongues to the sun.

You keep spitting out problems,

tricky equations.

Tell me Tell me Tell me

What’s the sum?

I’m trying to reach out, to get there.

Between incessant strokes,

I screw up my eyes to a blackboard,

but decimal points are fluid,

pages in a magazine, fragrant ink motes.

Backwards floating,

Catalpa brushes my neck

and I remember how to breathe

out loud.

Unlocked, your yellow pine wrists

and your green apple pulse twist

through me.  Your sorghum kiss

Drips into my heart

Which opens,

Fluttering.

Austeria

Austeria

It was neither night nor day.
A rise of rabbits in dusty crates girded the shore~~
Lostland driftwood vigil, mute and grey.
I swung barefoot, sweeping the straw air.
The breeze was warm, but the land was cold.
Glass-eye agape, I spun gold sand in my hands
To green fields that opened, stretching up
Past salt-spit stones to faraway pale,
Where the lilac lilted out,
Spilling crepe trumpets,
Violet tumbled glacéed notes.

Skirt-tucked, I wished to run to the fragrant one,
But, I turned away, unboxing my shoes,
Lacing grommets over canvas tongues.
When done, I rose, But she was gone.
A hundred folks spackled over the field,
Bent on writing their own cribbed works,
Troubling rocks, cuckooing through rills~~
Versifying the earth.

A town came up yellow and brown
And I was looking for you in flat places,
where you might have pressed through:
buttons & books badges & signs
Inhaling your name off the pavement,
Querying letterboxes with my palms.

Heat-seeking, I had come to the end of the world.
I found instead a clear pool
Where a little girl held a turtle~~
Black with carmine-etched lines.
She’d let it swim a few strokes ahead,
Then catch it and laugh as its legs pulsed in vain.

While thousands of miles away
The speckled olive damask of the Pike
Moved unseen below the ice:
Waiting, waiting . . . .




~~~~~~~~~~~~