In the street, puddles grow and merge like the Red Sea preparing to swallow Pharoah. Motorcyclists zip by in candy-colored slickers. Who is the mysterious man in orange who halts traffic with a wave of his arm?
a shrill whistle sounds
thunder rumbles overhead
we cross in safety
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
a thousand-hooved herd
trampling over the rooftops
monsoon rains approach
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
Broken clouds and shattered thunder
fill the sky. A stormy night.
Sheets of rain are torn asunder
by the wind that raids and plunders,
scattering its forks of light
through broken clouds. O, shattered thunder
in my heart, lands lost under
waves of salt that glitter bright!
Seas of tears that tear asunder
to reveal a hidden wonder--
new land receives my panicked flight.
Soften, clouds; fall silent, thunder.
Gentle rains, bring me delight.
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
Altogether brighter, not the
somber green of conifers.
Broad leaves, fig and frangipani, Indian almond,
pinnate, monkey-pod and Madagascar flamboyant.
No blossoms at this season
but the leaves will not fall.
I am unmoored from the calendar,
released from the tyranny of fall and spring.
I watch the rivers fill and sink,
slower breathing than I'm used to.
O leaf, green leaf that rhymes with grief
I'm learning to let go. Show me
how to choose my time.
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The sky is grey and hides the sun,
there is no wind, the air is still.
The promised rain has not yet come.
In blazing summer, we would shun
the sunlight. knowing it can kill
but now the grey sky hides the sun.
In winter, we have learned to run
through puddles, dodging overspill
but now, the rain has not yet come.
Between things ended and begun,
between fall heat and winter chill,
the sky is grey. There is no sun
to warm the dead grass. Streams are dumb
and reservoirs cannot refill
because the rain has not yet come.
There is so much that must be done
but oh, I cannot find the will
while greyness blocks the light of sun
and I await the rain to come.
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
The moose is still there, fifty-plus years later,
raising its antlered head before a backdrop
of painted water and taiga pines. Behind glass
it watches the curious crowds of people.
When I first saw it I was five, six--
probably younger-- I remember--
how it towered over me, the moose.
Since then I’ve stood in an elephant’s shadow
swum in the wake of giant mantas
slept at the foot of a live volcano. But awe
is not innate. You have to learn it. I learned it first
at the feet of the moose.
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Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
I’ve done a lot, and left undone the rest,
I lost some races, but I won the rest.
The day-sky fades to twilight castle-clouds,
Even the tireless sun must come to rest.
I sang this song through every verse I knew.
The tune goes on. I guess I’ll hum the rest.
The breeze tears cobwebs from my window-ledge,
who knows which spider there outspun the rest?
Seven days of work, and it was good,
and even God, whose Name is One, did rest.
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
Hush, little baby, don't say a word
Papa's asylum case will not be heard.
And if asylum won't be given
Papa’s gonna go to detention prison.
And if detention’s not forever
Papa'll be deported when it's over.
And if he’s deported to the place we fled
In a year or so, papa will be dead.
And if he’s dead, they'll come for me
We’ll live in jail in the land of the free.
Hush, little baby, don't you cry
Papa will be with you by and by.
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
Well, you know
that every castle’s built on shifting sand.
Your certainties must turn to melting snow
and spill like water from your empty hands
And well you know
this world is not a solid place to stand
every kingdom’s waiting for its overthrow
and the future never will be what we planned.
But also know
that only rust remembers every battle
that only dust knows all it’s smoothed away.
The lucky man rides high in a golden saddle
for just one day
for just one day.
And well you know
the past has left you feeling abandoned
the present time just seems to go so slow
the future’s like a rock on which you’re stranded.
It may be so.
Remember though
that every lie in full of time will be unspoken
and every scar with passing years will fade away.
All your chains and prison bars, they will be broken
And we shall see
(oh, we shall see)
a brighter day.
Books Available
My baby left me, I can’t break her spell
She moved in down at the Cat Hotel.
My baby left me, everyone knows
She made her home at the Catio.
She was led astray by a ginger tom
who sang in the backyard all night long.
He walked our fence on a moonlit night
Swore he’d be faithful until daylight.
My baby left me and now my spouse
Makes me sleep in the old doghouse.
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
You have vacated the watchtowers
on the walls of the world.
And out there in the gulf
you renamed “America”
you know there is
a monster storm spinning up
Katrina’s bigger, angrier friend
swollen on carbon-fueled heat,
veins laced with leaking crude. No-one
will see it coming until
it makes landfall, stomping the coastline
into giant flood-filled craters.
Then staggers inland, stumble-drunk
spitting tornadoes like a bar-fight loser spitting teeth.
Crumples prostrate against some piedmont,
pisses out a billion gallons of Gulf condensate
like cheap beer, washing out roads, dams, towns
and in its final spasms clutches the mountainside
crumpling it like a stained sheet, pulls down
mud to drown small cities. And from the fresh
and unmarked graves the ghosts cry Why?
Why were we not warned?
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
The moon’s cup, brimming
with the fragrance of lilacs--
let it spill over!
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
This is what we inherit:
a broken planet, desperate people, the corpse of a nation-state raddled with corporate leeches.
And so, like every orphan
we gather a few possessions in a sack
and hit the road.
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What is the taste of moonlight, flat stare of a lake?
What is the star at the heart of a stone, the sound of salt, a field-hand’s song?
What is the crown of night and the depth of day?
What is the wolf’s tooth, beat of a jay’s wing, curve of a cornflower petal?
What is the flame on the stove, the butterfly named sleep, the dog-named star, what is the spark inside my hand on the switch?
Books Available
Every night in 2020
I dreamed of Pestilence on his pale horse.
Sometimes just its hoofbeats--
ta-tump, ta-tump, heartbeats
on a monitor in the ICU.
Sometimes its whinny, harsh
as the wheeze of laboring lungs.
Some nights he turned and showed me
the plague doctor’s mask, long beak
stuffed with aromatic herbs.
Sometimes he shows me a skull.
Sometimes the face of someone I love.
It’s never really over, he says.
Next time instead of horse’s hooves
we’ll hear swine-hooves, a bird-cry, monkey chatter
and we’ll recognize the rider
when he’s standing at the bedside
and he says Too late.
Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside
