The Chameleon’s Eye

The course of evolution is the story of the soul.
 — CM

We begin with the chameleon’s eye
or perhaps with a war, and a little girl,
or a single cell, or a single thought,
floating about in a murky and
primordial world.

Let us begin again:
a murky and primordial world
is nonetheless wrought with stars,
turns the old chameleon’s eye,
emboldens the soul,
floating about in a murky and
primordial world.

Trapped like a fish, the soul insists:
thrashing about, floating in,
or clear as a clam in a freshwater pool,
it hardly matters why
or when.  Let us begin again.

I Have been Counting My Regrets:

Bacon, Facebook, cigarettes.  
Anger.  
Bluster. 
Laziness.  

Fearfulness. Indifference.    
Lousy lovers, stupid bets.

Things that should not be confessed. 
I’m still not dead.  

It should be said

I haven’t finished counting yet.  

First published in Rattle

Cicada Methuselah Clan

Underground
they carry on,
but there is sound,

there’s even song
that carries on
underground.

It is the sound
of weightedness,
of being bound,

of bending roots
and being ground
in dark perceptions

to the sound
of small mouths sipping
underground.

First published in The Lyric

Ode to the Slow

I’ve an affinity for ghosts, and so,
dwelling as we ghostly do, with the caw
and the hoo and the pinyon moon, where the freeze

and the thaw and the witness are
together alive and together entombed,
here on the edge of the high desert world

where all is stone and all is sky,
where an ancient sea was driven forth
to slowly die, here where the ruins and the peaks

have changed their names to bluff and butte,
here where the Ute had slowed their pace
to warm their bones and slake the thirst,

here where the reach of the canyon ends
or begins, as it were —like knowledge, it’s always
a rapture or a bit of a blur— (one could soar on the wing

or tumble in) here where the rolling stone knows
the floor is only made of sand, and the arc
is the mark of the fallen star, 

here where the ghosts and the slopes are wan
and empty of virtue and of sin, I lower a bridge,
and watch the morning fog roll in.  

Said the Sculptor

Given a freak of vision
and precision

a person can chip away at a thing
revealing the shape
that lies within:
Pallas Athena, The Thinker,
The Kiss,
The Griffin’s Wing.
Given the inexplicable itch
to chip and chip
away at things, it’s wise to recall
one can also end up
with nothing at all.

First published in Nevertheless (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2011).

The Skin of the Boy who Changed his Destiny

 — for Sherman Alexie​

A child is born unto this world.
He brings with him
the skin that has been given him,

the load that has been shifted to him,
and the gift that has been offered him.
From these things the child forms 

early on, a secret code,
that might in fact be better known
as salmon, or bear, or prayer,

or perhaps a kind of living law. 
Heredity claims the shape of the jaw.
Geography shapes the palm of the hand.  

The dying of the mother tongue
punctuates the northern star,
while all powerful Destiny

stands in the wings, in awe. 
It has been said that all laboring
in service of soul

is done in the dark,
that nothing’s truer than the autumn leaf,
and the life of the mind

is best described
as a kind of collective dream.  The skin
of the boy who changed his destiny

is mottled as the moth, is storied
as the mother tree, and bears the mark
of violence and legacy,

of tenderness, and melody,
where gift and load and forgiveness form
with destiny,

a certain solidarity,
and the closest the gifted child comes
to medicine, or remedy. 

Deconstruction

The chickadee is all about truth
The finch is a token. The albatross
is always an omen. The kestrel is mental,
the lark is luck, the grouse is dance,
the goose is quest.  The need for speed
is given the peregrine, and the dove’s
been blessed with the feminine. 

The quail is word, and culpability. 
The crane is the dean of poetry.
The swift is the means to agility,
the waxwing mere civility,
the sparrow a nod to working class

nobility.  The puffin’s the brother
of laughter, and prayer, the starling the student
of Baudelaire. The mockingbird
is the sound of redress, the grackle the uncle
of excess. The flicker is rhythm,

the ostrich is earth, the bluebird a simple
symbol of mirth. The oriole
is the fresh start. The magpie prince
of the dark arts. The swallow is home
and protection -- the vulture the priest

of purification, the heron a font
of self-reflection.  The swisher belongs
to the faery realm. Resourcefulness
is the cactus wren.  The pheasant is sex,
the chicken is egg, the eagle is free,

the canary the bringer of ecstasy.
The martin is peace.  The stork is release.
The swan is the mother of cool discretion. 
The loon is the watery voice of the moon. 
The owl’s the keeper of secrets, grief,
and fresh fallen snow, and the crow
has the bones of the ancestral soul.

First published in Hudson Review and reprinted in Best American Poetry

Merchant Culture

What’s the going rate for a poem these days?
— Jack Mueller

I’ll trade you a drop of snow

for a lyrical poem,
a parking lot for a muffled moan,
the justice card
for the nine of swords
a soldier’s heart
for a kettle of gold
a kindly verb
for the face of your lord,
a Persian word for an off
chord,
a thousand tears,
a million tomes,
a drop of snow
for a lyrical poem.

First published in Rattle

What You’ve Been Given

Here lie the things you have been given:
the unabridged and the riven,
the easy breeze, the unforgiven,
the throw-away, the hard wrought,

the speed rail, the train of thought,
the all is calm and all is not,
the darkest spark, the clearest bead,

the soft shoe, the stampede,
the germ of greed, the store of thanks,
the standard flaw, the saving grace,

the perfect night, the wanting dawn,
the white noise, the black swan,
the aria, the mad song.

Do thy best. 
Pass it on.

First published in Hudson Review

A Lizard in Spanish Valley

A lizard does not make a sound,
it has no song,
it does not share my love affairs
with flannel sheets,
bearded men, interlocking
silver rings, the moon,
the sea, or ink.

But sitting here the afternoon,
I’ve come to believe
we do share a love affair
and a belief —
in wink, blink, stone,
and heat.
Also, air.

This is not a fable,
nor is it bliss.

Impatience,
remember this.

First published in Poetry magazine