THE STUDENT 

I thought it would be 

the perfect ritual.

I really did.

But it wasn’t.

I wanted to do to Beauty 

what Beauty 

had done to me.

I thought it would burn 

like I did. 

But it didn’t.

The petals, the perfume,

the thorns 

of the freshly cut blossom

just wouldn’t 

catch fire.

It refused

to turn to ash

in the drizzling rain

and under 

the unblinking eye

of the magic mountain

at my back.

Because it didn’t burn

I had to throw 

the whole damn rose 

into the Shasta headwaters.

The wild current

should have carried 

the hardly charred blossom 

downsriver.

But it didn’t.

Instead it got caught

in a bevy 

of branches 

and rock.

And there it stayed,

so very far 

from the ocean

I meant it to travel to.

I had my reasons 

for this ritual. 

But my reasons 

weren’t reason enough

for loss to leave me

the way I imagined 

it would.

Maybe Beauty’s defiance 

was her way 

of saying: 

I have more, 

so much more

to teach you. 

You are, 

after all,

my favorite 

student. 

 WHAT WE CAN AND CANNOT SAY 

There is 

no word 

for the sound 

of a cormorant wing 

touching water 

in flight.

Just as 

there isn't

an expression

that describes 

the moment 

when the breath 

whispers yes 

to touch.

And yet 

when dry soil

receives  

a season's 

first rain 

petrichor is 

what we call

the release

of Mother Nature's

loamy perfume.

It's curious

what we have

names for 

and don't.

SCIENCE CLASS

Remember the microscopes, 

the beakers, the petri dishes?

Remember the saline solution?

Much of what we looked at up close

in grade school was in that salt water.

Saline is another word for salt.

Salt is a crystal.

Salience is a word that means clear.

Solution is a word that means 

answer. 

Crystal clarity is 

what’s needed to solve problems.

And that kind of clarity 

can be hard to come by.

To arrive at a solution 

you almost have to first 

become the problem, 

immerse yourself in the soup 

of the issue. You have to know 

how the problem behaves,

how it moves. 

You have to watch it 

like an amoeba

under a microscope.

Human beings swim in

the problem/solution petri dish 

a lot of the time. It takes 

the poet/scientist, within us, though 

to see that permeability is 

where it’s at - that we are better off

 just living the questions.

In other words: salience is 

in the act of osmosis, not in

the cilia and the cytoplasm.

AN AUTUMN RERUN

While stopped at an intersection

I saw the tiniest maple leaf

spiral its way

to the ground,

from branch to pavement.

The descent was over

before I knew it.

Before the light turned green.

I had the great desire

to return

the little red leaf

to its perch.

I wanted to see

it do what it did

again, but in slow

motion so the moment

would last longer,

so I could stay

longer inside

of those precious

autumn spirals,

so I could learn 

what circles 

have to teach me

before I go forward 

thinking the light is green

when it's really 

still red.