This Poem Is Air

One breath, then another—

that’s how bodies turn to song,

how wind tunes each leaf,

how hurricanes sound.

This poem is air,
as my life is.

In the Pines, In the Pines

Because the snakes ate the minnows,

Uncle Earl took a .22 into the swamp

behind his bait shop and shot them,

both king snakes and moccasins,

on the dark secret islands

of his pine straw archipelago.

I went with him, once,

when I was twelve and new to guns.

We waded through shadows

and air thick as blood,

saying not one goddamned word

until we found a big one

stretched on an island in a bolt of light.

It reared, angry, looping, as we neared,

while a fish, white as a bearded moon,

still alive, shook in its jaws.  

Earl handed me the rifle.

This only happens once, he said.

I thought my shot went wild

but as the gun made a flat crack

the snake coiled, lunged, collapsed.

We waded back into the light,

silent as fish all the way home,

and never spoke about it.

Earl’s dead now, of course,

but on some sleepless nights

I still hear the susurrus of water

under my uneasy bed.

Wind Is Hard To See In The Winter

when only the strongest gust

can push branches into a clattering frenzy.

Not like the swoon of tall birches

in a fine spring breeze,

when one leaf leads to another

and lips will part at a breath.

12-7-14

Invented Traditional Form

The moon is a hole in the sky tonight,

not reflecting light but pouring radiance

from some other sky into this one.

Like a searchlight beam on a prison wall,

it scans the ground for escapees.

The moon is a hole in the sky tonight.

One could read a paper by its light

but why bother, when the news is

not reflecting light but pouring radiance

Even the skin on even my hands

shines like a secret language

from some other sky into this one.

From some other sky into this one,

not reflecting light but pouring radiance,

the moon is a hole in the sky tonight.  

12-13-16

Everyone steps in a bear trap

Everyone steps in a bear trap,

and wears it as an anklet, painful,

invisible to the eye, but making a clanking

nevertheless, and audible even when

we speak of the stars.

Everyone bears a crown, unseen,

a hat with a hole to the sky,

a bit of panache as the world goes by,

and the light falls in, even when

we speak of the dark.

1-4-17

History Lesson

I come from central desert people, far as I know—

dirt farmers, ranch hands, fry cooks, the occasional card sharp.

Hoboes when they had to, mothers of small broods, women who waitressed

at the local diner. They all married once or twice.

One uncle was a prison guard, another an oil rig man,

one aunt went crazy without ever crying,

and dad could siphon gas from a poorly parked car.

Just people, old as the weather, with dust in their hearts 

and a bleak light in their eyes on a Saturday night.  

Mabank, Terrell, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Lubbock, and back—

they scratched a line between those towns

as though latitude was fate, as though they were partial to tornadoes, 

as though their feet were magnets on an iron highway.

If they had a history, they left it in those dry places and moved on, 

maybe late at night, maybe the next morning when the wind picked up.

I wonder if love tasted like water in their mouths?

9-8-15

All-night Pharmacy: A Love Story

I saw you stomping down the aisles of the all-night pharmacy,

both hands full of bottles, flashing an orphan look 

at the checkout boy, a gaze to crack the heart or curdle penicillin. 

What a toxic wonderland it was to love you,

when love was new and catastrophe meant romance.

I waited for you between the beauty aids and decongestants

but you passed through me without knowing,

even though I spoke your name in wonder.

One of us became a ghost and rays shot out of our hearts

when it was over.  Love always ends that way.

4-14-15

The King Lear Glee Club

The only member of the King Lear

Glee Club and Dancing Society

meets this morning on a bus stop bench

in the Kroger parking lot to perform

the Off This Mortal Coil Shuffle.

His hair is ruffled,

his mouth is agape in an empty O—

O! O! O! O!—

while only his own fingers

play on his xylophone ribs.

He rises to scuttle crabwise among the Pontiacs

and Chryslers, peering into their windows

to sneer at the food wrappers and baby seats,

occasionally keying a perfect car door

with a precisely inscrutable line.  He bends

to see his hair-choked face in a side view mirror

and weeps to find it there.

The grocery store draws him in

and he makes his entrance with stiff pride—

the magical doors open at his kingly command—

but no one looks.  He bellows, retreats,

going out to go in again, sure this time

that the muzak plays for him,

that the florescent lights shine to ennoble his royal brow,

that the silver linoleum has been laid for his own bare feet.

He orders his sullen subjects to shop, 

to pick vegetables and push carts,

to edge away from him in silent awe 

and well-deserved respect as he stomps

and titters, rehearsing the arguments

proving his divinity—which is evident

in the cereal aisle where angels find bran flakes,

in the meat and poultry section where he sees signs

forked into the bare bodies of dead animals,

in the perfumed pharmacy stinking of corporeal decay,

in the candy treats on shelves too low to reach,

for what sane king would bend for mere sugar,

and in the narrow-eyed stare of his fool

who gathers baskets and mocks his own mockery with secret love.

Or does he?  What is the bottom of mockery,

where is its top?  Peel back the ordered linoleum tiles

and the abyss crouches, scissor open the roof

and find empty air, entangle the nerves with bargains,

and you will save nothing.  

Nothing in the parking lot

nothing among the vegetables

nothing in the dairy products

nothing in the empty registers.

He stumbles outside where a storm gathers

above the automobiles.  I forgive you, lightning,

he mutters, but not that bitch Cordelia.  

By his mad decree the winds roar

the sky boils and the clouds hurl their cataracts

till the power lines snap.

And then the darkness comes.

Crazy proud blind Lear staggers a two-step 

and opens the first unlocked car door he finds,

sits dripping on the plastic-covered throne,

places knuckled hands on the great wheel.

Turn, he begs.  Turn.

9-28-16

Diary Poem

Yesterday morning I woke from the little madness

of dreams with a stiff chest and a ragged heart.

All last night I slept in pieces,

waking and re-waking to see if I was alive.

This morning at dawn the heart crowed:

still here still here still here.

1-13-16