Bonfire
Once, people wanted to know
her. Perhaps it was her comely face,
featured almost weekly
on the society page.
Starched gentlemen came
calling, meek as their offerings
of posies, porcelain and perfume.
The one who stole her heart brought
ragtime, gin and cigars. She still
remembers Daddy’s crimson
apoplexy, his farewell
parry: Take my word,
he will burn you.
Oh, but they burned together,
brighter than a bonfire,
his kiss her kindling, her flesh
his fuel. The fire, white
hot, consumed them until only
embers remained. Ash.
Today, her garden offers
posies, gifts her with perfume
and every evening, the quail
come to call. She sits, sipping
gin from porcelain, beneath
a fine sift of ash.
Darwin, Rolling Over
The first quail came hungry
in summer. How quickly the pair
plumped on cultivated night
crawlers, snow peas and raspberries.
We saw them build
beneath the yarrow, watched
them tend their hatchlings,
noticed how frost thinned
the covey. Still, two became eight.
Became thirty. More.
The cats might have culled
the flock, but we kept
our tabbies inside, sequestered
from predators like paparazzi
wary monks. Jackrabbits
had also deserted the sage, in favor
of garden bounty, pursued
by coyotes, slothful gourmands
who found easier meals in trash
can pate and cream
fattened feline tartare.
Perhaps the dogs could
have prevented their nocturnal
patrol, but our papered spaniels
were easy targets
for ticks and briars.
Bathed in oatmeal shampoo,
coiffed to feathered silk,
they lounged on leather
sofa cushions, slept in pillowed
crates, dreaming of swimming
pools, tennis balls.
Now, when winter night snaps
too hard, the quail, countless, leave
evidence of their moonless
nesting on the hot tub cover.
Come morning, they shake
warm tails, forage beneath
the well-stocked bird feeder, heedless
of cats, yawning and posturing
at the French doors, or dogs,
listening to the purr
of the coffee maker, knowing
the can opener’s promise
routinely follows.
Believe what you will
about Darwinian theory,
it is not natural
selection, but rather extraordinary
adaptation that will save—
or doom—what remains.
Dry Spell
You are like rain, forecasted
to quench a summer’s thirsting,
thirst grown beyond easy need, to life or death.
I watch the clouds,
approaching windward mountains, slate
bruising black beneath expectation.
The western window
darkens as, laden, the curtain falls,
descends to veil peaks and rifts, draws nearer.
Is it thunder that I hear?
Or is the sudden rumble but the flurry
of hurried birds, on wing against unceasing drought?
One warm, wet spatter
stings the dust, stamps its ragged mark,
imprints a welt of hope upon the arid parchment.
Promise sizzles in the air,
wrapped in threads of ozone, electric
with desire so bold it borders ecstasy.
Claim this vacant sky.
Cast your shadow, speak to me in thunder,
throb against thirsting skin and flesh gone fallow.
Oh, give me rain!
Gift me with downpour, fill this empty well,
the reservoir drained to grit by lingering dry spell.
A Poem Comes
a backdoor storm
sliding in from the northeast. A surprise.
It reveals itself as sunrise
lifts its countenance above muted hills.
It scatters, silver
light across the winter-plumped valley.
It swells, contracts,
bursts with the brass song of saxophones.
It floats on a wind-risen
mist perfumed with rain-spattered sage.
It says goodnight,
paw prints in a sponge of desert sand.
Something About Snowfall
How
she
flies
in
the face
of doubt,
Something About Snowfall
A Dozen Views of the Far Edge of the Rainbow
A single splash of October
dawning, sun’s magenta
cheek rests against a belly of storm.
Beneath pale solstice
sky, youthful limbs
tremble, nude
except for flaunts of berries.
On the vine, cabernet is but cask-less
fruit, skins in need of pressing.
Gentleman answers the rouged
invitation with circumspect
inquiry. She is no lady,
after all, and payday
was yesterday.
A lover’s simple riddle:
What breaks so completely,
in such crimson silence?
The ancients, surmise
those who have devoted lives
to post-graduate theorization, fled
the terror of garnet-ringed eclipse.
But what, ask simple-minded
souls, if the Old Ones knelt
in ignorant adoration?
Two people, strangers
to each other, but not to my son,
telephone in one week.
They’ve dreamed of his funeral.
Dread throbs, scarlet
as casket satin.
Summer snapshot:
children, black
seeded faces pink
with watery satisfaction,
acquiesce to napkins.
A burnished flounce of lace
trimmed velvet reflects Yule embers.
White stars afloat
in a field of blue lose
luster, sponging blood.
Pele wakes from liquid dreams
of her mortal chief, parts
rapacious lips and licks
the salt skin of the Islands.
It is morning this evening.
The moon forewarns her rise,
surprising the sky
with titian light.
In the reeds, a ruby
jeweled blackbird observes.
