Over Arizona

I take the window seat,

Hoping from cloud height to hear

What the sleeping earth has said:

 

Something in the fires,

The clipping hooves of horses, burros

Echoing somewhere still

Stirring dust and the constant carving— 
 

Rocks in wrinkled sheets

Clouds must know

How the old lines read,
 

Something simple, instructional—

Laws for exchange of heat and light.

                                                                              8/2012

Fronting

Roadways pull these restless years,

Late summer burning early gold

On the evening leaves,

Open door weather at last

Setting the boxed air free.  

September is the time for travels,

After the bending and unbending

Of hot August, the humid dreams

Spent in stealth of night,

Dried by sunrise, nothing left to cool the day.  

You front the day—

How many fronted now?

Tolerate discomfort, discontent, until

You cease to mark the lack

Of meals filling hunger sharply felt,  

Neither the meal nor the hunger

For so long now of any note—

The dulling of the Life—

Until the surprise of a scent

Of supper in someone else’s home  

Reminds you it’s dark,

You walk the neighborhood alone.

These are stars beginning to burn,

This brightness is the moon, 

With crossing clouds

That smell of the sea.  

9/19/2012

Naiade

Formless, dark, the faceless deep

Unconscious of its swell

Before dry land sculpted

Solid banks, definitions

Shaping currents, commerce, Time

Malleable and responsive in wet gratitude

For land to push against,

Hope of sound and sense in

The ceaseless caress of water

Coursing to the limits of its shore. 

                                                                               September, 2012

Book of Common Poets

That the irregular line of trees against the sky

Was noted today—

Whether the leaves were bright,

The variance of greens,

Were they moving or still,

If the motion was from wind

Or creatures leaping,

Whether signals or moments passing

Of no intent but that the line was noted,

For the necessity of poems

To those who know we die a little more

When they cease to matter,

Not only that a bird perched on a wire today,

But the color of its talons,

The sheen of feathers dark or light,

Whether they were smoothed or fluffed—

Was it a bird alone, or grouped?

Did they face the same direction,

A choir fronting or with the wind?

Or did one perch apart, forlorn,

Lacking the human word forlorn?
 

Not to impose meaning upon the birds,
But to note their presence on a day

Over the shadows of trees

Darkening the asphalt we drove upon

Without thought, rolling upon shadows,

To offer peace of knowledge

That a poet remains to cry

For the beauty sustained,

Noted and sung without interpretation

Beyond its presence of a day—

The jagged line of trees,

The particular shade of sky,

Will not perish, as a promise made:

Not a luxury of art, but a common need:

To say a family of hawks called in the yard,

That the gardening was good this year—

                                       

                                                                                    July, 2012

                                                                                    for Paula Robison