Selected poems

WildFire Weather

Every year, the Santa Anas

Rushed down from the high desert.

The winds sang hardest in the blue night,

Blowing through our dreams and turning

Children into small gods

With fingertips that sparked.

The winds blew against nature.

Hot and dry

And drove people from their houses,

Instead of in, children spreading

Their coats for wings.

Some years, the winds set the hills

Above my childhood house on

Poppyfields on fire.

Neighbors gathered in the streets below,

To watch the fire whirl

And breathe the sweet and stringent

Smell of eucalyptus burning.

The fathers spoke of devil winds

And wildfire weather.

The mothers calculated and recalculated

A safe distance from the flames.

The children, though.

We danced in the street,

Excitement leaping crown to crown.

We knew the burned hills

Were the best place to fly kites.

Tossing a square of fabric overhead and running

Down the hill,

Feeling the string snap and suddenly,

We were holding down the sky.

From Mississippi Review

EVENT HORIZON

It turns out

The universe is expanding

So fast, the stars

Will someday fall away

To darkness.

It turns out

Einstein was right

To recalculate

There was a constant

After all.

At this rate,

Give or take a millennium,

No telescope will give us back

The past. I can confirm

This is true.

Already, I am missing things.

My mother’s sewing rocker.

Two tins of my grandmother’s buttons,

Handed down.

My great Aunt Mabel’s

Gold bracelet.

All of it lost

Or misplaced in memory.

The letters home from camp,

The roll of pictures that failed to develop

From that morning in New Orleans,

And New Orleans.

Then the sleeping heaviness of you,

Missing from your box of ashes.

It turns out

The nature of things is to vanish,

Moving away from us,

Faster than the speed of light.

If only

The universe could slow

From Signs of Life,

BenedIction

In the canyon,

The river slips

The land’s grasp.

Walls let go the light.

A veil of swallows

Lifts and disappears.

Along the bank,

Barns kneel

To kiss the earth.

Smoke fades to wind.

I cup your ashes,

Light as breath

And cast

In the current,

Time rushes.

The setting sun will

Later light the moon.

The river

Turn to rain.

From New Millennium Writings 2016

More poems:

Mango Season

Crosswinds Poetry Journal Vol II, 2017

Green Flash

Oberon Poetry, 13th Annual, 2016