THE HYDROLOGIST

I'll tell you:

I know a metaphor 

that can climb a waterfall 

and you’ll believe me 

with the certainty of a salmon.

THE TOOL

A tool to scry the sun.

A weave to braid the wind.

Belief that knuckles thunder.

Forest, branch, and ax.

A tool to mute the crow.

A curve to carry patience.

Time that raisins grief.

Laurel, dove, and ark.

Shears to prune the priest.

A rose to mount the season.

Word that weathers storm.

Quarry, rock, and chisel.

A quill to ink the night.

A joist to brace the silence.

Shame that feathers down.

A song, a note, a bow.

The key that drives the car.

The dream that travels north.

                   

SPOKES OF A SUMMER

Because Beethoven was her lover at eleven.

Because there was a couch on a pier and fire in the sky.

Because a twig at a time makes a nest.

Because artichokes gone wild are like anemones out of water.

Because the face of a cherub's like an alloy of the heart.

Because carillons make music by the ton.

Because H – E – R are the letters blazing in the pavement.

Because the dog becomes it leash.

Because the red of the colander makes the blueberries bluer and blacker.

Because bark is God’s syllabus.

Because sorbet on the tongue is like breasts in a painting.

Because the frontier is the dream’s preamble, bullet by bullet.

Because the sense of an ending is a fiction falling asleep.  

Because the spokes keep the summer still and moving.

Because pears can be beacons in the shade.

Because waking is a murder in the ears, crows falling from the wire.

Because Mojave sage makes a garden sacred.

Because chlorine’s the body’s perfume.

Because the black and yellow wings find solace among dead petals.

Because the hummingbird is the clicking we hear.

Because the pepper tree has the soul of a dove.

BURNING ANTS

After the dilation,

the nausea,

and the fisted-grip

began pumping

its dull thrum

inside my temple,

I stared  

into the burning mirror.

You may feel a slight sting,

the voice in the dark crooned.

And that was when the ant

at the back of my brain

began to crackle and burn.

That was when I saw him:

a boy, in summer,

fumbling to focus the sun

on the head of an ant,

through a broken piece of glass.

Almost done,

the ophthalmologists chirped.

Just a few more.

But he was a big fat fibber.

Caught in the cross-hairs

of the infra-red beam,

I was the ant today,

the doctor's drone, 
and he was out to kill

the colony, to save my sight.

To keep my humors flowing.

After he finished

with his false sun and lies, he clucked,

Don’t forget to pick up your drops,

your Imitation Tears, on the way out.

Salve for the wounded.

Raw and teetering,

I stood at the reception desk

waiting for someone to notice me.

Can some one help me, please?

Who sent you? the woman in green pajamas hissed.

Who, who sent any of us…? I keened.

Now just give me my goddam tears!