All they had

Six chickens,

a scrawny tomcat,

and a plumeria.

A prickly pear cactus

next to the house

and a Dodge Polara

which hadn't run in years,

but the cat liked to sleep

on the dashboard

when the wind was cold.

He liked to carve

duck decoys

although he never

hunted

anymore.

He still liked the feel of a chisel

slicing through the wood.

She liked kneading dough

and hanging clothes

listening to him whistle

hoary songs that no one

played much,

anymore.

camera eye

camera eye

saw the Doberman

pissing on the palm.

saw the lovely

and the sick.

the wad of Wrigley's

stuck on the pedestal

of the monument.

kissed silky necks

and freckled shoulders  

with phantom lips

when the shutter

softly clicked.

celebrated vows

which hoped to stick.

saw a faded sign for

ice and meat, deer storage.....

down the block

from the cactus cafe

on a frozen Texas morning.

loved the girls on a summer beach

listening to a boxy radio

and smoking Virginia Slims.

caught the hustler at Fisherman's Wharf

trade a furtive bag for folded green.

witnessed LA's men in blue

club the red flag demonstrators

marching up Wilshire Boulevard.

my camera eye

was a guardian angel

that never blinked.

til now.

my camera eye

is nearly blind

what was crisp

is just a blur.

i have to switch

and wonder how that

is going to be: 

the left replaces the right

as the good one.

how will the spare compare

to the original equipment?

The Fabulous Fifties

The Visalia high school year book theme,

class of 1949, was atomic energy.

and that was seen somehow, as benign.

Poor Julius and Ethel Rosenberg sought

to democratize the H-bomb.

They got the electric chair.

Meanwhile, my grandpa Smith

had his eyes on eleven acres of sand

beside the river named St John.

The magazines promised us

a rocket-powered

magnesium alloy future,

all streamlined couches

and flying vacuum cleaners.

-we got big fins on cars.

Walter Keane's wife painted big-eyed waifs

-but he took the credit and the money,

Beatnik Jack hit the road

and Senator Jack wed young Jackie.

Beside the river named St John,

the honeysuckle twined around

the well on Grandpa Smith’s farm.

and he grew a ton of tomatoes,

melons,and peppers.

Isaac Asimov coined the first rule

for automatons:

Do no harm to humans.

Because we had that covered

pretty well ourselves.

calculating the size of god

An hour before the sun breaks over the roof,

I stagger to the alarm clock app

where my phone sits

on the laundry hamper.

Whatever dream was playing

gone before I put the coffee on

and turn on the shower.

At five twenty this morning,

my mind is grappling with

the consideration of how vast

a heart must be to hold

all the suffering on this planet,

in this universe, in the billions

of galaxies, the streets and cities,

jungles and deserts,

kitchens and bedrooms,

boardrooms and alleys.

How big is God?

big enough to enclose all that?

are there worlds where the greatest miseries

are hangnails and rained out picnics?

is there some cosmic balance sheet

where children's laughter

and a singer's soaring song of joy

eclipse the crib deaths,

rape and slaughter,

war and famine,

the quiet beating in the schoolyard

no one intervened to stop?

It must all fit together,

the sum of all the pieces

make a whole that has no boundary

or edge, no meaning unless

everything is included,

if meaning is even possible.

I stepped into the shower

savored the warm water on my head

with my eyes closed.

When I opened them and

reached for the shampoo

I saw a panicked spider

scrambling along the edge of the tub

trying to avoid being swept down the drain.

Should I let it?

When my mind has just been

struggling with the question

of how ungraspable the vastness

of soul must be to hold the universe?

I shut off the water and stepped out

dripping on the floor.

fetched a piece of toilet paper

and gently trapped the spider.

I put it in the garbage bag

under the kitchen sink,

alive and ready to go out

to the can on the driveway

when I'm dressed.

A small mercy, very small because

my heart wasn't big enough this morning

to go out to the street dripping wet and naked

smoke in the breeze

sometimes all that's left

are the pieces and the place

the story is just smoke in the breeze

a faint scent of something burnt

the sound of roosters

a breeze sobbing in the pines

and faintly, so you'd barely notice it,

what's missing:

a chorus of frogs in spring,

the crickets of june,

when the night smells of wild rye

and ditch water

anthems of dawn

without the flags and rockets

what harmony is this?

what geometry expressed in the spiral

of a snail's shell, the way that thorns

climb up the stem of a rose?

the familiar proportion

of shoulder to waist to ankle

i'd like to sing duets with mockingbirds

they could do the car alarm,

i could do the lawn mower

or perhaps to bask with the iquanas

on the hot black shores of the galapagos

then close my eyes and drift away to

to a honeysuckled arbor in some other

wild sunny place 

or i could just go bark at the clouds,

and chase diamonds

down the drain trap under the sink

old friends

there's a new tenant in the old brick storefront,

a coffee shop with all the current affections:

soft jazz on the sound track,

esoteric muffins, cookies

sans sugar, sans fat, sans gluten.

i have my favorite window seat with

a view of all the little dramas on the street.

a couple walking hand in hand,

suddenly let go and glare

like they've just been hit

by ten thousand volts at sing sing.

so i don't see her come up behind me.

brush a warm hand across my neck,

rest it lightly on my shoulder,

shoot a hot breath across my ear.

i turn and look up to see

those flashing eyes and teeth,

the wink implied  with just a hint.

i know her, knew her, knew her when.

i can see the table where we shared…..

all those electric conversations……..

all that tension...…so,

why does her name escape me,

memory desert me?

at such an

inconvenient time?

hello stranger, what a surprise, i say.

so good to see you, i lamely improvise,

hoping that this stall will resurrect

whatever traces my reluctant neurons

can dredge up through the latest

clutter of scandal, scores, and musings

about the hidden plot lines

of the people walking by.

how long's it been?

i brilliantly inquire.

she says, ten years my friend,

and you haven't changed a bit.

she's lying and knows I know it

but we'll just pretend it's true.

wings for a snail

While waiting

for my wings to grow

and contemplating

the clotted sky, a broken comb,

I wondered if

there are still a few

poems left in my

chromosomes,

some philosopher's kidney stones,

to transmute the lead of the street,

into gold.

(if i'm lucky)

I imagined:

the smoky torchlit cave

of Alta Mira twenty thousand years ago

where people clad in skins and fur

drew a polychrome herd of bison

and deer loping across the ceiling.

And the reed-thin sun-blackened man

who sat beneath a Kakadu gum tree,

painting kangaroos and crocodiles

in X-ray style, white lines on bark

the vast world of his Dreamtime,

while mine is mired

in the prosaic of sidewalk gum,

paychecks, and weather reports.

my understanding grows

with all the speed of a snail,

.........but without the shelter

of the shell. oh well.