Inaccessable Areas Exist

An abalone in a pail,

Large and lonely and muted,

Sits in a galvanized jail. While

Its own mortared shell, gray-hued,

Hides delirious light:

Amassed motes

From years of labor

Imbued iridescent.

Now hauled from 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, gray-green passerine,

Take me with you

On your little barred wings~~

While in rooms below,

Counterpaned in black and white

Of the new night,

Ruby slippers gleam,

Lustrous sheets glacier up,

then flow.

Dill & Hollyhocks

Dill & Hollyhocks
You come with the sun.
Waning rift of moon mists
Disperse in your wake.
Red-rimmed, the enamel dipper
You tender aqueous,
Gifts my lips truly
Overflowing.

In this light, I crimson warm,
I strawberry fan on your tan
Melon belly.
Swinging open, the gatefold
Welcome of your smile
Is where I hang mine.
Your generous hands &
Your tongue slowly
Catch my drowsing heart.




~~~~~~~

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.






~~~~~~~~~

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 . . . .




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

SHE KEEPS SHEEP BY MOONLIGHT

{For Dianne}

Siberian squill flood up to the sill,
Feather-tipped, blue-veined bells.
The nectaries of Hellebores tonight are hid,
Downcast violet and olive peplum shells.

Sheathed in moon-stained yellow charmeuse,
Albatrossed with seeded strands of pearls,
She stands stock still, a prisoner of the window.
The single slip of periwinkle crepe~~
The Aerogramme~~troubles her hands.

She traces again the slight scratch,
The little stitches of black script,
The nimble loops so quickly slipped
And pulled so unmistakably masculine,
As knotted swards of silk tie weeds
Clumped in drifts on a papery blue sea.

The sharp tang of iron and sulfur
Rises from the bath and stings her tongue.
From the crook of her small nib
She would billow out on vellum to him~~
Cattleya and pomegranate,
Jasmine and attar,
A seductive quelling finger to his lips,
A slurring opalescent lullaby.

In the morning she dreams
Under a hazy circle of midges and sedges.
The shrill tocks will come
And the sun will crash off bevels.
Will the honeysuckle still twist and rise
So sweetly? Will the warbler sing?
Or has all been lost, torn down &
drowned in the wreck of the night?



~~~~~~~