Baby steps

Another curly-haired

girl was born this spring

the day after my father died.

I've been wearing a pair

of shoes he bought online

nearly every day.

I think he only wore them once

they were too hard for him to tie.

true enough, I have to re-tie

every block or two myself.

And now the baby

has a couple of teeth

and is taking her first steps.

First words are soon to come,

she's already trying.

How delighted I will be

to hear her say my name.

Bumper crop

The pale harvester's

swath was wide this year.

He swung his scythe

with vigor with every stride.

Through field and factory,

bedroom and hospital ward,

the yield was most

-satisfactory.

returns

look at that old man.

he must be

-about as old as me.

but I don't have

faded numbers

tattooed on my neck.

not even sunrise yet

and the big white tuesday

deportation busses

are already lined up

nose to tail at the curb.

christmas day is past

and a big week

for returns

has just begun.

she runs softly

She runs so softly

that her footfalls

make no sound.

Past the splash

of broken Mercedes

window glass

sparkling in the street

where an ill-considered

midnight parking decision

put a dent in the deductible

of the Allstate customer

who'd cabbed back

to the suburbs after

four or five too many

the night before.

She runs softly

in the dim dawn,

over ginko leaves,

golden premonitions

of the pale shredded

documents that soon

will drift like snowflakes

from any windows

in the district

still capable

of opening

at all.

How it started

They don't live in houses,

they sleep across the tracks

under the elms behind the cannery

where Mommy works nights.

One guy sits on a lumpy

rawhide suitcase strapped shut

with men's belts and clothes line.

His pal is grilling pork chops

skewered on coat hangers

over a fire of busted crates.

Mommy says they're hobos,

in the morning they'll be gone,

now that the tomato harvest is done.

Says maybe they'll go down

to Porterville or Exeter.

The oranges should be

about ready to pick.

I see them the next morning

standing in the door of the boxcars

as train begins to roll.

I wave.

and the guy with the old suitcase

touches the brim of his fedora

and waves back.

I want to be a hobo

when I grow up, mommy.

do you, honey? why?

I want to ride in boxcars

so I can look at everything

and I want to eat oranges.

walking in the morning wakes my words

The winter crows last evening

-hundreds of them-

whirling in the dusk

above the giant bow and arrow

embedded in the park

along the Embarcadero,

perched in raucous rows

on the Muni Metro powerlines

and in the Canary Island Palms.

Hitchcock was a piker

with his puny flock

compared to this vast cloud

black as the list

that he consigned poor Tippi to

when she dared to resist

his groping hands

and gaping lips

in the back seat of his limo.

it's the little things sometimes

High heels on concrete

clip clop like tiny hooves

and the feathered tail

of a baby dinosaur

trapped in amber

 

was recently found

in a Burmese market.

The structure of the feathers

suggests the possibility

that the colors might have been

as iridescent as a peacock.

Imagine that.

It mitigates somewhat

my disappointment

that the exoplanet,

55 Cancri E,

is probably not made of diamond

as was previously thought.

to do list

Swim with the marine iguanas

on the shores of the Galapagos.

Admire in person the city of Petra

carved into the Jordanian desert's walls.

Take a slow boat

up the Congo.

Rewrite my romantic saga

about a lizard-loving savant

collecting data and dodging

the tweakers collecting metal scrap

in the Chocolate Mountains Bombing Range

just east of the Salton Sea.

-Story board it

for screen and stage.

Get my photographs and poems

onto walls and the printed page.

Get to Rome somehow

and Barcelona.

Play the autoharp like Jimi Hendrix,

write dazzling songs of joy and sorrow.

Draw old style topographic maps

of Martian canyons and volcanos,

Reconcile desire

and fidelity.

Consider the necessity of faith

in the face of mortality,

Pay the rent tomorrow

and not forget

to stop by Walgreen's

to buy a pack of razor blades.

a small casualty in the financial district

A dead meadowlark

lay on the sidewalk

next to the yellow-painted

commercial parking only

curb this cold morning,

a migratory casualty

fooled last night

by big city lights

or the beckoning

reflection

of the bright dusk sky

in the window of the

fifth floor hedge fund.

His yellow-feathered breast

with the black V

like a fifties vintage sweater

unruffled, smooth, and silent.