MR. DICEMAN

So small and impotent on the table,

blanched and blotted

on every side. I scoop them up

make a fist like a rattle: shake and roll.

Yahtzee! I wanna yell, but don’t.

Instead I read the random numbers

like runes, give up the hawing and the doubt,

the sleepless nights, the fear

and let the knucklebones divine what happens next

between odds and evens, yeses and nos.

My part’s merely the question:

Do I…

Join the circus?

Give the drifter a lift?

Learn to Lindy Hop? 

Water the orchid?

Climb Kilimanjaro?

With so little choice and empty of worry

my days are like free jazz

filled with wagers and crapshoots.

I am a gambler thru and thru -

now that there’s nothing to decide.

Is this what it means to die?

UTILITY

(ode to a woodpecker)

no grubs, beetles or sap

no bark to plunder

no oak in sight

foraging isn’t the issue

spring is

she is high above the houses

on a pole that runs

power between them

almost invisible

she drums her message like a voltage

among the wires

rat-a-tat-tats she is ready

hammers unabashedly I am

open for business

 GRAZING

A man on a path

approaches a red sign:

hazardous cliffs

stay behind the railing.

An end of things,

the beginning of things.

Elk grazing.

The curving line between

grass and azure water.

Ridges, fog.

Coyote’s eye behind

barbed wire, dozing.

A red trawler

on a boundless sea.