正月 俳句

blades of sun crack open Seattle's oyster sky

excitable birds
in a glove of snow
shiver the bush

airmother of pearl
sets luminescence in a cloud bezel

a brief astonishment of rain hides the faces shopping by

Song from Timaeus

A song from Timaeus, 2300 years later

All that is

lives,

the world, its creatures,

Time,

the fixed and the wandering stars.

The Master Builder

caught fire

in the light of his mind

and wove earth’s Form

on the loom of gravity.

The beloved elements

swore their vows

before him,

a consecration of air and water,

quaternal matrimony.

From their union was born

The Cosmos,

the soul of all that moves,

and everything at rest,

though nothing is at rest.

Our spherical soul

contains the will

of the Demiurge,

but not, alas, his highest

perfection.

Condemned to roam,

thoughtful Cosmos

reflects eternity, but passes by.

This contemplation

we call Time.

We and all the wandering stars

bear its curse,

for all created beings,

born in restless motion,

with all our borrowed beauty,

must die.

Fairfax haiku - poems from a fruitcrate desktop

today a doe

looked in my door and told me

change your life


bruised clouds
release a stutter of rain


a plum rain
slaps our petal-littered street
awakening wrens


a fishhead wind
scours the beach gone dim


keep away the cold
while I wait outside your door
fingerbone kindling


awake at the crack 
of an acorn underfoot
doe by my door

five short poems about Fall

what's left of the woods

when the sun's gone

on the down low

Autumn thermals raise

a mad ballet of sparking crows

wind stops to catch a breath

when the rain falls short

a slice of the lunar knife

September's ritual wound

I recall your grapefruit

kiss 
the sugar eclipse

松風

Matsukaze

Tidal scent rises

from wrack, shell,

and the crush of kelp,

flavoring salinity.

The lash of an offshore wind

teases the beach pine branch.

まつかぜ

the tree surrenders

her name.

Bereft she bears the hesitant moon

awaiting the return of misfortunate love.

Congress of the Birds

Wandering surrealists

                    release mechanical birds

automata cluster,

                    snap their little metal beaks

hair triggers hinged

                    with a clever trip spring

begging for a bit of bug

                    they chirp for wormy office

like speakers of the house,

                    carve their faces out of tin.

Sensing a trace of antimony wind,

                    feathers rattle with the rustle

                              of dead-brushed brass.

Acoustic Entomophagic Paranoia

Nothing is the way it seems.

Everything's the same.  Soon a tiny bug

will find her way across the room,

crawl an aural spiral

down my open ear

into the limbic lizard brain, be

eaten hum and buzz for breakfast.

Big Sur Hot Springs Inn 1966

I shiver In the cold
water porcelain bathtub,
prepared for the plunge.  
Neal’s in the hot
water brick tub with a jar
of peanut butter in his hand.  
We’re perched on the trembling
lip of the Coastal Range.  
A cut in the cliff spouts hot water,
sprinkling the salty Pacific.
Neal prays to the blessed spread.

     Would this be a better butter if it weren't peanut butter? 
     Peanut Being befits a butter such as this.  
     How are we to know?
     The taste will tell us so.  
     I know by the spoon,
     the spoon that dwells within.  
     and scoops without.  
     Does the spoon improve its Buddha Nature?  
     Its better Buddha Nature?  
     O Amitabha, we salute your peanut butter
     on your way to sundown in the pure Pure Land.

Then he stood up naked in the tub
and hurled the jar as far
as it would fly, out
into the restless Pacific.

Waking Rude

Someone tossed the brain

of Robert Rauschenberg.

I found it in the dumpster

back of Happy Donuts

in a box of day-old glazed.

Through the specky window I can see
the minister of quantum gravity

draw the grand map of an explosion

in process on the back

of a napkin.

I sleep in pieces

like a moon.

Everyone has a ghost point.

You just have to find where it is.

Loan me some light til I get on my feet.

Auspices

The boreal wind racks

a chevron of starlings.

The new chill cues a perfect break

     scattering the augury

          rough cut facets of the shifting flock

                         divine our lives.

I love the craic

of lake ice when it breaks
the news of thaw to the fish