Motion-Activated

A motion-activated light switch
Ignores the shadow bulk of my body,
Waits instead for my passing hand,
My passing hand, my passing hand.
Damn it! My office doesn’t want
To wake up either.

2017

Walking to the Mailbox After Rain

No one was driving in from the north
Or the south but the wind
As I walked the muddy drive,
Its dry skin almost stopping my sinking
On the way to get the mail.
Crossing the yellow highway line,
I noticed the bi-level cut of grass
Around the mailbox post—
Our neighbor’s gesture of kindness.
Anonymous financial mail
I would soon tear in half and discard
Tucked under my arm, I heard
The distant hum of a coming truck.
Time to re-cross. In the wide yard,
Young grasses waved in patches,
Thicker in the shadows of dying elms.
The odd ocotillo in the huge pot
Living lonely in the center of the yard
For who knows how long, stood
Taller than a man, with more arms.
And there, the cat litter bucket
I had just emptied in the dumpster,
Forgotten, rolled across the drive,
Tripped on the track of an early rivulet.
The propane tank, half full, crouched stout
As a legless, faceless, weathered hog.
Even though we may move soon,
You said we will fill it since it was full
When we first moved in, new with love.

2017

Moving to Salida

In the twenty-three years that it took
To return to the valley to live for good,
I pushed three children into likelihood,

Or they pushed me into spiral books,
And twenty-three rings grew in cottonwoods
Storing the river where they stood.

2017

Intellectual Property

Jean Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Cadmium), 1984, MCA, Denver

SAMO’s copyright
did not protect Basquiat.
ART bought what he stole.

His streetborn soul.

2017

Fine Audience

The shabby roof of the earth
Is just southwest of my house.

You think I’m being metaphorical.

(Show photo of severed shed roof
in the tall grass prairie, something
we never got around to burning.)

Thomas said you know a place
For the first time by returning.
I say, just before leaving.

We are both right.

A martini in a mason jar
With anchovy stuffed olives
Helps render the insight.

I’ll always wish meditation
Were so quick to tender
This lingering off-pillow presence.

Habit is hard to make.

In the red guest house
Where artists and poets have slept,
I have laid out their books
And hung lithic broadsides.

Covers curl
For moist air, for fingers,
For fly leaves and title pages.

I read aloud Jack’s poem on the wall
To no one but myself.
Twice taught.

I am a fine audience.

2017

Baby Mama

Belly too big for such a small animal, spring nights warmer,
We nudged the gentle feral cat out of the laundry room
To give birth in some hidden place, to add her progeny
To the lineage of striped cats who’ve roamed prairie for decades.
But days later, her paw. She limped, licked it furless.
Two tiny wounds. Snakebite? Damn it. We let her back in.

The day before April Fools’, on his way out, I heard him
Make a perplexed sound, turn around, announce to his daughter,
To me, “Come see the kittens.” She gave birth to the first two
In the litter box. Repulsed, I arranged a dirty towel on a pillow,
Moved them all there, where, two hours later, two more appeared.
Two sand and black stripeys, two black with half calico faces.

She earned her name last summer when she showed up
Pregnant, too sweet to be believed wild, but wild nonetheless.
Enthralled with processed cat food and human touch,
She slinked around our door, tripped us walking too close,
Disappeared a couple days, came back thin. The kids
Searched the farm, a day later found a weak kitten in the corner
Of a close-doored, open-windowed barn room filled with milk jugs,
Boxes, crushed beer cans and scraps of dusty pink wall insulation.

The kids probably touched the kitten too much, put it back
In the barn. Baby Mama, nearly a kitten herself,
More interested in us than nursing, gave up on it. Next morning,
I found it smothered in the insulation, stiff. Surprised
To find myself judging a cat for derelict mothering,
I buried her kitten in the grassy field, forgave her, so young,

So newly loved. Last night, after six days of non-stop nursing,
She slipped out the laundry door into the dark. Kittens snuggled
Like warm monkey bread all night without her. Surely,
I thought, with a healed paw, her body craved mice. Or freedom.
We called for her this morning, like parents of an addict,
Not expecting much, but hoping. Kittens slept, still breathing.
Finally, stepping out to start the car: there she sat, elegant,
Behind the rear wheel. I opened the door, praised her return.
In she ran, hot with milk, and lay down with her fat, blind ones.

Refrigerator haiku (magnetic poem)

Wanton world puddle
Ricochet cloud runs dark wild
Heart galoshes thrill

2017

Forgetting Air

Some spring mornings in Fort Morgan,
stepping into the parking lot,
crossing the mowed lawn of campus,
it is easy to forget about air.

The breeze is strong and clean and sweet,
oddly lacking our factories’ famous scent:
cheesy beef beet poop soup. Relief!
The smell of money went walking somewhere.

But then, entering the building,
we are greeted with night’s awful breath,
inhaled and held by brick and mortar
long before morning wind kicked in.

A building cannot exhale through a new day’s
shortly opened doors. We enter the stench,
take our usual breaths, filter, forget:
like inevitable death, it fills us.

Questions for a Pumpkin

Do your seeds sing a slick song?

Are you aware you are
both food and lantern?

And home?

Do you dream of hundreds of tongues
searching the cheeks of a huge mouth?

Or of wingless albino bats trembling
in a wet cave, upside down?

If a woman entered you at will, a kept woman,
would he carve windows of ears, nose and eyes,
a doorway of a crooked-toothed smile?

Would she become a candle in your belly,
throw herself in a flickering dance
to light his way home?

Can you accommodate two?

Or love?

Would it hurt, would you mind,
if she bakes and scrapes
the innards of your entrances,
blends in eggs, sugar, milk, cinnamon,
rolls a crust, pours you in,
eats you, her home, with him?

Bridge

At thirteen, the stubborn plastic tube
of childhood ear infections had to be removed.

In its wake, the healed hole did not close,
stole bird wind and breath hymns. Instead,

he learned to drum blast beats, buzz rolls,
crash and snare. He learned the muted world,

to turn without fanfare or shame
his better ear toward a quiet voice.

If we had known how easy healing could be
without major surgery, we’d have done it sooner.

With simple tool, a doctor roughed the edges
of the perforation, made a bleeding wound

of tympanum, and with a common hole punch,
cut a dot of paper thin as cigarette skin.

When she placed it on the ragged hole,
it became a bridge for blood, for hope,

for cells to build themselves a road
over the small chasm. Sound began to cross

at once. Driving home, the radio rushed him.
Overcome, he dialed down brass and bass,

like a solitary monk who hasn’t seen a friend
in years first bows from the neck, the waist,

then holds him at arms’ length
before the caught breath, the full embrace.