Sooner Or Later They Ask Me My Age

I give a different answer each time,
tell about how the horizon
creeps in on what used to be
the open-wide mouth of sky.
About the way time accelerates,
and clouds race, trailing
long hair into dusk.
I explain how years stretch
soft and sag like old jeans,
whole episodes lost in the pockets.
How the other day I found
a crab claw on the beach,
fresh enough ripped from the body
that the blues and tomato reds
were still alive and bright,
and I walked along tide's edge with it,
holding hands with death.

First published in The Poetry Society of South Carolina's 2009 Yearbook

Journal Pages

Sisyphus Back Teaching Middle School Art

Gray clouds flap restless over the dome.
Dawn seeps in through long, thin rents,
swipe of cat's claw. Look how

I am walking on wind, stepping invisible
stairs, ones furure generations will build.
The miles I travel, I tread with my voice,

each step a word hurled into storm gales,
battered phrases blown back in my face.
steep uphill climbing, especially

with this bundle of snarling youth. They poke
and nip each other in the dim light inside the bag.
Rail bitterly about each other's farts and elbows.

I am, most ridiculously, hauling them
up this slope, foolishly imagining
the view from the top will dazzle them.

Dozing on the floor of Dulles, CNN
& muzak inroading dreams, plus
flourescents & graveyard cleaning staff.

Close eyes tight & fish earplugs
out of jam-packed carry-ons,
diffuse sound to something far.

Charleston airport closed, fly off
to barren sheep-shorn hills, ago
two centuries, where, beside a loch,

pipes drone in sweet dissonance to
a plaintive voice weaving harmonies
with breezes, hot flashes & AC chill.

The beach suspects I've come this way before

It recognizes my steps, familiar tracks upon its skin

It wears its galaxy dress this evening

shell flecks glimmering fragments of their names

Arrives the Heat

Exhaling humid breath
spongy monster
fleas and mosquitoes hovering its skin

lightning will arrive like a new idea
rain-cleanse the moment

a jellyfish turning itself inside out
salt streaming like stars
through galaxies

Again, now, lantana season, and yes, the roaches.

Bloggy kind of afternoon

Well, this is new. Links and followers, I sense this could get tangled, worse than kitten yarn, but exciting too.

This Hollow Stem Morning

The man showed me the other day how the butterly bush stem is a hollow reed when pruned close to the ground.
Last night went on into the small hours, and I feel much like that hollow stem.