sea-grey
            ravished heart

 wild license    open country
       of apple flowers

 immaculate mountain
snowmelting

~Worms~

     “It may be doubted whether there is any other animal which has played 
 so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly, organized beings.” -   
Charles Darwin

           Little tillers.  Ploughs of night-

         writhe and gizzard.  Eyeless, they grind

        through hummus—through leaf tip, rock

       bit, rootlet—burrowing tubal

         as the tubes they burrow.  Dirt-

           serpents, vermicelli, bait.  Hook-

            clowns, inchlings, doll snakes.  Sectioned, 

          intestinal—each a squiggle 

        of innard—a stretch of entrail 

      or colon. Intelligent, unsung 

DROWNING IN LAKE MICHIGAN

 My first memory looks up to sunlight through water.

I'm on my back at the bottom and have already stopped 

struggling for air. The sun's full hands overflow

light leaking through the flawless blue, 

quiet and calm like a silent song, Mermaid, I, 

I'm already at peace with my death before my father

plucks and pumps me out, sputtering

and crying  as the water goes out

The Wind’s Measure

 The length of the wind runs from mid-May to murder.

The length of the wind runs from January through joy.

The wind runs as long as the right hand’s first finger

points to the sun after thunder.

The wind gallops prayerward

like a horse held in the palm of a rock,

no taller than a knee bent for the sake of singing.

The wind weighs more than the fossilized horse and stretches from

            fingernail to praise.

all River at Midnight

 Fireflies brighten the grass by the shore

as you pass under the low-hanging trees

in your father’s green aluminum boat

above the submerged farms and rock quarries;

setting the lines on the branches, the leaves

just skimming the surface, you navigate

through an alcove, then settle in between

the bait cooler and the motor to wait.

he gift 

in another land
I ask permission to take from the fig tree 

my guide says
the Bhutanese believe plucking a leaf 

is akin to cutting the throats of one thousand monks 

here, he says let me do that for you,

how is this one? 

Saw them get out of their Lexus

to pick up their 10 and 11 year-old daughters

fat, affluent, they were out of

a George Grosz painting,

hands on porcine hips, obviously giving the girls

a lecture on the American Way.

Disgusted, I bent back over my book,

a biography of the Marquis de Sade,

God Lives in the Country

 I'm taking "God" back

from the Christian Coalition

I'm takin' it back from the 

Institution, collection plate,

the Pope's got no business in my bedroom

or the wombs of unwed mothers.

Washington’s Winter

Winter’s taciturn realm asks nothing.
Crowned in hushed browns and somber greens, it rules by turns with quiet song
then with pummeling winds obeying no one.
It will be dark soon everyday for months
Color hibernates, leaving behind
its essence to purr
in everything oblique light touches.
In the hush, it asks us to see, and see again,
to hear the echo of step
over moss covered ground,

The Times Asks Poets to Describe the Haze Over Seattle

 No one asked me, but I would have said this apocalypse

looks like home.  The laureate

says a grey gullet has swallowed

a molten coin, another calls it powered cadmium

and cirrhosis, dystopian, grotesque, a crematorium.  Yes,

Gangbanger Baptism, 1992

They are brought forth, the calf promptly fed,
in trays and painted plates of gold,
in their Sunday best, their carpet rolled
for those who snatched dowry, who left them, who fled.

ELOI ELOI LAMA SABACHTHANI  

for my Father and Luciano Iacobelli 

a word

spoken into flesh 

caused my being

like hum to static

or consciousness returning 

beatitude will fall softly 

to lavish this sinner 

OLYMPIC HARVEST: A HAIKU SEQUENCE

 daylight saving time

at ferry dock, daydreams rhyme,

take wing, fairly flock

 polyglot folly:

hear not the melancholy

bebop of leaf rot

The sidewalk 

you drift upon will bury you 

and the books you read will make you question joy,

but reading mine with your bookmark,

reading mine in the light of 

someone else, I am reminded 

of that confident awkwardness

WEBS

 My friend, Beverley

thought she could

weave clothing

out of spiders' webs

But her hands 

were too thick

And her eyes

too hot

And the season

passed

The Mouth

Not some forgotten part

of the body — the spleen 

or hair on the rim of an ear.

The mouth is wide, like a city.

Like horns in traffic, most words 

are useless and annoying. 

prayer beads

quiet as the dawning sky, i sit
anticipating birdsong, unsure about the sun.

this stillness, my pilgrimage.

PALPITATIONS

make my heart

beat irregular

take off

at crazy speed

Sequence

5:50 am 

A dream vignette splintered into reality. 

Sore muscles of last night’s workout.

A daily success, even before dawn. 

Eyes half closed, coffee on my mind. 

Reasons to call in, rejected by fierce routine. 

“Alexa, play KEXP.” 

ROLLY CARTS

I want an IKEA life with you.
One with gifts untold. I want
a life with one of those big
rolly carts - piled high with the
small things that will make our
lives maybe a little more
comfortable. I accept the challenges
of IKEA assemblages later.