Rahima

Unexpected always,
Like wild strawberries
Or lupine in dunes
Appear and hold earth together,
You walk with an open book
Beyond the brim of my hat.
I look.
"It's only a mystery," you say.
Yes, it is certainly that:
You on the path to
Rahima, bright day;
Me, trimming escallonia;
Detectives on separate ways
In an old universe
That still glistens.
You speak.
I listen.
"This, I am more.
Something else that is more."
Hair full of fairylamps,
Downward flutter of fingertips,
A gesture stirring stellar dust,
And I believe you,
I must.

Will

[photo by Norma of Willie and Geo. steering '71 VW in and out of future]

Take Antaeus and the
Eastbound bearing race:
Souls rolling beween poles
Slip magnetic journals,
Fly away, cling to magic
In nanotubes or catch
On some arrangement of
Rock.
Prehistory, future,
Names given infants by
Infants --fires deep in the
Jewel.
Silence? Sound?
Better an aeolian harp
Than fool who has
The king's ear.
There are no kings here,
Only torchlights seen
Across dark fields
By beings on business
Of their own.
All illusion is alone.
Could that include this question?
I must limit myself to
What is humanly possible,
But
Will could answer this.

Gooseboys In Mist

Predawn:
Necks
Black questionmarks
Over foot-high fog,
Alert for gulls, dogs,
Each other.
Hysteria
Contained, conjunctive
High notes in poor
Cupless ears.
Here the field fills
With light.
Interrogative over
An end of night.

Rock Point Three A.M.

An electric path--
To be what one was
At trailhead in
Night-sea crossing--
Under the moon
Between black crashes,
Incandescent corridor
Of not-to-be and west
Away from memory.
Something takes flight,
Swift, silver.
Rest of me turns east
And out of night.

The Night Shift

Unlit witches search
Latent paths ahead
Of plasma--
Dangerous work
Under the rod--
A kind of hysteria
In clouds of sheet lightning
And earthwide echo.
Rain falls
Around a plume of entropy.
A consternation of witches
Stirs the steaming sea.
By dawn only fog
Clings to the garden and
Work awaits me.

Travertine

Eyes of creatures long gone
And what they saw are
Caught under crystal
From solution--
Light of other days compressed
Into stone, deposited
Here and there--
Their tongues lapping
At the surface of waters
Long since turned
To desert.
Here, between red,
Green, yellow are
Black veins in
Travertine that tell
Of seas, rivers, lakes
Come and gone,
Prairies carbonized.
There is much to read
In a pebble.

Refraction In Garnet

This evening enters
The garden on rails
From an easement
Between the inquisitive
Scent of cut geraniums and
Autumn night.
It rolls under clouds
Of red light, on
Distant steel.
I hear wheels, a
Train far away
In a promise of rain.