Invisible wall

Without a door or window

Can words penetrate?

 Like roots in a tree

There is more of you and I 

Than what can be seen

This our family

Of humor, talent, and grace

 Self-emptying love

Kindness for others

May this be our thanksgiving

Nothing more or less

Neglected  bouquet

Rose petals fall from the vase

Sere but still fragrant

 Careful as you step

There is more than one reason

That they’re called flip flops

 Shoulder their worries

They are young and will repay

It is worth the weight

 A point of order

Who said this guy named Robert

Gets to make the rules?

 Can they remember?

Entwined - tumid and gleaming

The fierce smell of love? 

 

With no up or down

We all live on island earth

Afloat together

 Of someone's nature

That which speaks eloquently

Where they find beauty

 To sleep - I must sleep

These dreams derange the darkness

If I could just sleep 

 When I am hiking

I feel closer to the earth

Peaceful humility

 Let us be advised

If you can’t be wise - be kind

Others will give thanks

 With no place in mind

Daydreaming amid the pines

Wondering nothing

In the remainder

Let me ramble like the wolf

Following a scent

 Which is more dreadful

Fear of something or nothing

The known or unknown

 Elixir of thanks

Even offered for the least 

Is balm for the heart

 It pleases my soul

To put my hand on your back

And know you’re near me

Sometimes in the wild

I enjoy hearing one thing

Faintly my footsteps

 There’s more to be found

Elder folk should still explore

Always being born

 Foretelling the storm

The wind's sure sililoquy

Speaks where no one hears

 An old dusty dog

As dependable as tides 

Waits for his next meal 

It must be dauntless

When art becomes civilized

It turns to culture

Woman of color

Prices, immigrants, and wars

They fall for the fraud

 The grace of the whale

Northbound from Baja's warm gulf

A calf by her side

 If we are so great

Why can’t the popular vote

Elect the POTUS?

They know of water

 And the approach of winter

Plants have agency

Walk in the woodlands

There are tidings in the trees

Messages of sap

The burden of fear

 Worry feels better than naught

When faced with unknown 

 The will-o-the-wisp

Rises in gold - sets in blood

Shroud of ghostly light

 He wandered away

As though he was attracted

To some dark allure

 Faint calliope

There's a trail of dust out west 

The circus draws near

A dim unswept room

Moths raise their dusty flutter

Webs wait in corners

Grateful ofrenda

A constellation of heirs

Glows with devotion

Play mariachis!

Cry the song of love’s lament

 What a joyful pain

an eager patron

the wasp is fascinated

insatiable

A cheerful drifter

Spins a hurdy gurdy tune

Children twirl with glee

There is a fable 

The raven who ate the sun

Calls but cannot sing

 Cold fog on the lake

The ospreys have quit their nest

Geese are on the wing

 When I am joyful

And quiet and satisfied 

I stop making sense

 The storyteller

Waits in her candle-lit tent

Your life for a dime

 Ghosts of volcanoes

Haunt Coconino's plateau

Does lava still lurk?

 When written at last

My story will fill the page

No room for margins

 Autumn is paisley 

Layers of twisting patterns

Colors intertwined 

 The moon longs for light 

Like a suitor suspended

Fain to glow again

 What sore secret broods

What revenant visits her

That she wakes weeping

 Once in the springtime

The remontant dianthus

Gives again in fall

 my autumnal friends

changing lives - stories falling

expecting winter

Clement October

 A good day for a tootle

With nothing in mind

 Something beyond us

Where the compass will not point

Without reference

 reliably kind

when the days increase with warm

spring forgives winter

 Encouraged by the rain

The Ponderosas respire

A vanilla balm

 I am primitive

A glad and natural beast

More ape than angel

 We are taking more

Than the earth has to render

Nature's depletion

 In spite of ourselves

There’s fortune on the table 

We just have to choose

 Before he looked out

He knew the snow had fallen

First of the winter

 

Deprived of the sun

Leaves beautifully dying

Latent hues revealed

 Winter is sabbath 

Time for rest and reflection

Covenant renewed

 I would have few doubts

About what I think I know

Were it not for dreams

 Prints of beginning

Early thoughts of a young man

Letters to myself

 The charm of autumn

Never is a conclusion 

As bright and graceful

may there never be 

something lost for what you need

enough for enough

 Pulled weeds this morning

My fingers still smell like dirt

It’s been a good day

 O the refeshment!

A blue jay in the puddle

Flitter - flutter - splash!

 Neither when nor was

Every time that I wake up

It is still today

No delight compares

Surrounded by sensation

A dog in the woods

Listen carefully

Can you hear beyond the words?

The most is unsaid

 There's much to be gained

From an aimless meander

Each stride adventure

Just the hawk and I

Drifting in the equinox

Warming air lifts us 

 what his eyes revealed

never so secret again

love changed forever

 Fully propounded

The moon hangs like a question

A bright cloudless night

There should be a group

Where they share stories of loss 

Socks Without Partners

 Cleaned out the garage

Found letters from my young loves

Some still make me cry

 He would be a fool

To not know that he's a fool

Certainly likewise

 The way that you think

Bears more import than the what

But less than you feel

Suspended in dawn

 Ghost of a summer's flower

Gauzy perfection

 here's the gist of it

i've lived with me long enough

 to know i'll be fine

 Heavens to Betsy!

My mother used to exclaim

I still don't get it

 Donald and JD

Stay away from dogs and cats

They can smell a fraud

 In the dry lake bed

The elk assemble to graze

Before heading south 

 See their hollow eyes

Who is want will seek for some

Hunger breeds the thieves 

 When the data thinks

The union of opposites

Leaves one dimension

 What is it of grass

That reaches into our hearts

Cool blades of calm

our new intellect 

choices but few alternatives

a spare amplitude

Summer paseo

Cicadas sing in the gloam

Neighbors on the porch

 When you need a friend

To bring gladness and respite

Call one with four legs

 Summer afternoon

Just one rule for kids at play

Be home by supper

 How sweet September

The last breath of the summer 

Still green and mellow

Appreciation

 My dog's chin rests on my lap

He thanks more than I

 The twilight holds fast

To the last reserves of day

As night advances

What now hereafter 

What will I write when I'm gone

Not of things to come

 The promise of fall

All that is of seasons born

Eventual green

When I consider

How do I know what I know

By reason of what

 from its many buds

i was expecting more fruit

than the year would yield

Made by caring hands

With sinew, reeds, and willow

Baby's cradle board 

 He has beads to sell

Sitting on a curb - pale-eyed

He pleads “por favor”

 When I was a youth

Willing to starve for a rhyme

Craving little else

 She is a prism

Through which the white light of day

Bends into colors

Bare-limbed oaks of fall

 Stronger from what they have lost

Nourishing themselves

Cones are almost ripe

As calls imbue the morning

Pinion jays rejoice

 We have primal choice

A scropulous criminal

Or woman of grace

 Why It Is Fall

Blooms release their seeds

Ponderosas quit their cones

All things back to earth

 this bare lifeless tree

a shadow of its shadow

leans but does not fall

 when it is winter

the seeds wait under the cold

but do not forget

first to the peanut

a parsimonious crow

departs with its prize

 while in the washer

my clothes get so excited

they turn inside out

from the essence

the eternal feminine

lures to fruition

 the fox is startled

its face stained with rabbit blood

it crouches - then darts

in a cadent gait

baggy suit - green fedora

he whistles Blue Moon

 A charming blossom

Belies her struggle beneath

Potted and root-bound

 scrupulous spider

waits on its gossamer net

a gnat flies headlong

Wherefor, I surmise

There are no secrets in art

It's meant be known

whatever the point

 waste no time in its proving

time will forget it

The random bubble

Floating in perfect tension

Bursting with colors

 Humiliation

Shares the same space as triumph

Lonely places both

 No guise or design

Explains the storm’s confusion

The night is fractured

 

the shrinking river

groans under its cold lading

helplessly it calves

 It rises for air

(a sudden splash of wonder)

Spouting sea skyward

spinning seeds of ash

the twilight shroud of summer

 green lanterns floating

 A turbulent ride

Aboard the covidcoaster

Not thrilled - but consumed

 At Ketchikan Creek

The salmon will soon swim home

Odyssey of life

A thin golden crease

Where the clouds allow the sun

The gray sea afire

 My fashion standards

To wear no tie - tuck no shirt

To not be the worst 

 My purple-veined babe

Peach-fleshed and staring at me

Corn silk for your hair 

 Momentary lapse

Two monsters have locked their horns

The stink of skid marks 

 the peach - now full - drops

an avid squirrel finds it

eats all but the pit

All dressed in colors

 July comes like a maiden

Tumid and fruitful

When it all depends

On weight of a circumstance

Why bother with fear

 Is it possible 

True interconnectedness 

Indivisible?

Summer’s endowments

Shirtless lads and lightning flies

 Corn and carnivals

I have reached my time

 When questions turn to wonder

Where sense means marvel

 A small piebald dog

Who has never seen itself

Thinks nothing of pride

There should be more days

In which nothing is required

Days of happy chance

 one sudden moment

glows in the measureless span

a star in itself

 colors are no accident

with a clear purpose for each

prismatic wonder

 how withered the lives

that have found nothing to share

how sole and arid 

 A thunderous sky

Birds seek shelter in the pines

The forest trembles

 Will life assemble

To a predestined center

Where it all makes sense

 as the day retires

the last candles are blown out

thin smoke from their wicks

 A pale glimpse of dawn

I’ve known too much of the night

It’s too late to sleep

 Morning seatherny 

Their chorus fills the garden

My heart glad with them

 Rolling in my sleep

Waves of dreams wash over me

Restless day ahead 

 These long green days

Times of common paradise

When summer repays

 When they had little

But their love and innocence 

When they were once rich

 Crow to another

Have you found something to eat?

Enough to partake?

I-40 at dusk

Headed west outside Flagstaff

Peaks against pale skies

They all make good sense 

The arguments and reasons

Yet, of course, unless

 They are no less wed

Two hundred seasons have passed

Love still binds their lives

 Uninvited guest

While I was hiking in peace

A bug up my nose!

 On a southbound train

Shantytowns along the tracks

Dirty children wave

 Shindy of finches

Taking turns at the feeder

Blithely aflutter

 I will rest my head

On the pillow of summer

And enjoy bright dreams

Night-red hollyhock

Dusted with stars of pollen

Defies summer's glare

 An absconding crow

Always looking for a snatch

A thankless rascal

 To bed on the rocks

Seals lumber from the ocean

Their barks fill the dusk

 It all looms faintly

As outlines - barely defined

Until the fog lifts 

 Cormorants fly as one

Fiercely they face to the wind

None is the fastest

 A dignified gull

Perches on a wave-drenched rock

Appears to own it

Riding on the wind

A pelican rises - stalls

Spots the fish and dives

The beauty of life

(of the light and its shadows)

Is that it persists

 A train in the night

Hastens into a tunnel

Dark such as darkness

 Can we do without

Abstractions that visit dreams

Illusions are real

 

To a horned lizard:

You needn't transform to stone

I will not touch you

 They are multitudes

Small - busy - mostly quiet

Insects surround us

 A breeze happens by

Brushes against my shoulder

And whispers something

 For all this wonder

Of the ages uncounted

There must be children

 The revolutions

Fire - wind - coal - oil - data

Will we be disused

 Temple overgrown

Stone eyes gaze into the past

Monkeys scream at night

My dog lies by me

 She puts her head on my floot

So I will stay here

 A dry summer trail

The grassses and moss are grey

Everything wants rain

 I will fly no flag

Nothing to hang slack or flap

My staff will be bare

 You will never know

Unless you open the door

What's inside or out

 Mississippi town

Where you can't find a stranger

People nod and smile

 A moth on the sill

Dry depleted and expired

Relief was outside

 Here's the troubling part

The key to our election

Might be Taylor Swift

Shielded from their eyes

Privilege as privacy

Secure but alone

Eventually

It will be a one lane road

That takes you back home

 Whatever I know

I sure don't know about cats

They don't seem to care

 Summer sun is high

Even the fish are sweating

Dogs under the porch

 Sometimes I’m a goat

A buck chewing old stories 

Calm and ruminant

A quick chuckwalla

With its carrot tail blazing 

Darts under a rock

I dream in cursive

With all the stories conjoined

No spaces between 

 Dreams are not fiction

As our waking makes them seem

Neither is more true

 Sun under the clouds

A good day for a rainbow

Storm shaped in colors

 Of all the bad lies

The best are mostly the truth

What folks want to think

Might it be better

If we all had tails - like dogs

Because tails don't lie

 Beware of desire

When the fates want to punish

They answer our prayers

  In a torch-lit cave

A charnel of ancestors

Pictographs above

 in the thin twilight

a loving voice gives comfort

mother's lullaby

 Leaning on the wall

He grins like we've met before

With a nod - Hey now

 You will not see it

With furtive power and grace

The cougar lunges

 As butterflies know

A best path need not be straight

Fortune is random

 Which concerns you more 

The visions from yesterday

Or those imagined

 Seven dappled eggs

Safely in a shaded nest

Chicks will soon emerge

 Salubrious spring!

Tonic for winter's repose

Huzzah for the season!

 A mother quail broods

Her duty greater than fear

She just stares at me

 His nervous lawyers

With more at stake than he has

Lose and he won't pay

 The migrant ospreys

Homeward bound to their aerie

Still there on the snag

 What is more fetching

Than a dog bounding your way

A stick in its mouth?

 Three laughing maidens

Run from the apple orchard

Aprons filled with fruit

 Busy with its worms

Does the robin know itself 

Or measure success

 as i turn a page

in the book of surprises

a chill goes through me

 The folly of speed

Always to arrive sooner

There instead of here

 Gladly of service

Aided by spring's warm increase

I will cultivate

A crow's eye flashes

It knows more of usefulness

Than man has ever

He has placed a gift

Secretly at her doorstep

Will she open it

 Error to error

Brings us closer to answers

But truth no hither 

Tangy - sweet - smoky

You just can’t hurry the blues

Slow as barbecue 

 a restless morning

dreams stumble into the day

a wan moon lingers

 Comparison's child

Suckled at envy's long breast

Never contented

 May is a maiden

Winsome when she is in bloom

Beckoning our gaze

Play now for me Spring

Make tunes of hope and color

Morning birds will join

Uncalculated

I remain to be pointless 

No circumference

 Spring busies itself 

With bees and birds and breezes

Open the windows

Don’t wait for poems

It’s hard to write while sitting

Find them on a walk

 How peaceful the day

When I answered no questions

Relief in the vague

With no roofs or walls

650,000

They’re not criminals

When at my clearest

Still - at the common level

I am like water

 What I now wonder

When did I become so small

Merely but gladly

 What of life weighs more

However ephemeral

Dreams or the waking

freed of three conceits 

now disabused of oneself

to be without me

The three conceits are to think you are more than someone, 

less than someone, or the same as someone.    

 Springtime is green first

Even blooms are verdant-cased

All is young and glad

 Kneeling - as to pray

With tender care I plant this

Faith grows eternal

 What is ultimate

That surges and decreases

Death once dead - what then

 Spring’s invitation

To all that would be renewed

Join the jubilee

 Stayin' out all night

Hopin' blues will go away

Too late to regret

he knew as he spoke

it was all said for himself

the words tailed away

 It's never too late

To catch the rhythm of blues

Get down side of life

 Memories so sweet

When it all seemed so simple

One more day away

 When she put him out

Like a dog in the cold night

Lyin’ at the door

 Do we love perforce?

Are we meant for this nonesuch?

Do we have a choice?

My dearest assured

I will build you a bower

Refulgent with love

Fluffy chicks of spring

Bathing in the warmth of youth

Follow mother's path

 shadow of the moon

proof on our most modest speck

the stars are always

 My thanks for the storm 

The rain - soil - worms - seeds - and grass

All things natural

 already the past

what you think is now is not

when you live too fast

 The tree decided 

Feeling warm, glad, and sated

It burst into yellow

 Sooner or later

I will surely lose lose my mind

And find something more

Fearlessly hiding

 Where nobody will snatch me

My fortress of thorns

 

Rain interrupted

The saguaro has its sip

A new drop begins

 Peace in wandering

Every stride is a journey

Each a new frontier

 The ice thaws and cracks

Calmly the river begins

Winter drifts downstream

 Guadalajara

Sweet jasmine climbs up the wall

Mariachis play

 I am yin and yang

Sometimes one or the other

Better both at once

 Hasty daffodils

 A delicate glimpse of spring

As our youth - too brief

 I have forgotten

Birthdays and dreams and names

But seldom a song

 Spring never dies

Its progeny is summer

Bud to bright issue

 he sits on a box

with pen and pad - dog beside

verse for the asking

 A quail tips it’s head

Full-throated - it sends a call

The banter begins

 With little in hand

And some to share with others

Enough is a feast

Swirling gracefulness

The music becomes her form

She dances out loud

 On a wave-drenched rock

A seabird raises its wings

Plying wind to rise

Instinctive design

Geometry of the hive

Perfect without plan

 Of pulse and power

I am made of the many

Of quiet and calm

 Where can they find peace

Compassed by the ghetto walls

Nothing left of home

The oxymoron

Of indecent exposure

We’re born without shame

 To be told one must

When there are so many ways

And none is more true

When nectar is spent

 The sound of petals falling

Announces the fruit

a quail’s threefold song

as the day begins to warm

another responds

Invisible wall

That faith cannot penetrate

No ladders or gates

in orotund voice

the mockingbird wakes the day

then the finches join

There's true excitement

When the circus comes to town

Shall we run away?

 Spring is a tunesmith

You can tell by how birds sing

New glee in their songs

 why would i dismay

when there is no remedy

or when there is one

without the heavens

the lake would have no color

clouds nowhere to sail

 

A curtain of thin clouds

The moon rests on her cool back

An owl sends four hoots

despite our penchants

 we're more same than different

more one than many

 in my prior life

before my lungs and mind filled

just mother's heartbeat

herded to the verge

refugees in their homeland

aggrieved and denied

 nothing from anger

or pride or envy or greed

that would be perfect

 at the edge of land

the incessant sea crashes

salt wind in my face

 of all becoming

i trust possibility

the beauty of chance

 the hungry children

[huddled in silence and fear]

are too weak to cry

 a dew so heavy

the ferns bow their backs and weep

as though in mourning