Autumn Blues

Autumn has put on its brittle shell, or taken off. Half-naked and too skinny in a rust-colored negligee, the oaks striptease to the high ice-music of the shifting pallor of the sky.   The photograph captures an instant, the story captures a thread. Nothing’s...

California Fall

Already late October and where did September go? In the garden crocuses push up through the leaf fall. Everything’s confused here. It’s California, caught in weird, autumnal thrall.   California, like a page thumbed open, exposed to weathers, like a recitation of...

Penumbra

1 a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light   2 a surrounding or adjoining region in which something exists in a lesser degree: fringe maybe we had been talking about this a long time, the sky growing...

Becoming Pearl

to love is pearl medicine terrifying transformation oozing grit and spit unwinding to original aura   to love is unveiled garbage poems in the furrows a restless gypsy at the crossroads earthward and earth bound   hardest homecoming a house with the dirt...

St. Martin in the Fields

this morning my body wrapped like a cord like something caving in on itself the little stone in my chest knocking in its cavity   and though the sun strikes white-gold on the evergreens and a man on the radio mentions the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and...

Pillar of Fire

Tonight for a few moments i was a pillar of fire i could hold my own even if a whole city was burning   but driving home in the car suddenly a tidal wave knowing for the first time how much i love you and not   knowing in which pocket to carry such knowledge...