Five Poems

An Outing On Good Friday

     for Claudia

We sat on the rocky scarp outside the Golden Gate
away from both city and suburban demands.
Even the insistence of the breakers was remote
and on the choppy waves the gulls dipped and rose.

We sat a long time without conversing, while
our separate minds' tangles reluctantly relaxed.
The sea, I don't know, seemed new to me, and then
you pointed, “Is that a whale there on the beach?”

Sure enough, a beached whale with a broken jaw,
bloated, wrecked, and deader it couldn't be.
I spoke, “Must've been run over by a boat—once,
near Nome, I saw kids use one for a trampoline.”

The energy of its body depleted, it was powerful still
in presence, a marvelous shadow from the deep.
You stood transfixed and reluctantly confessed,
“This is my first one.”

We both felt lucky to see a whale from so close,
even if it was dead, hoping it to be a sign
that there are whales around and not an indication
that there are only a struggling few.

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Visionary Designs

     for Sito

We drink tea at Nefeli's on Euclid
then hike around the Berkeley hills
looking at houses.

This is the Lawson house
built by Bernard Maybeck in 1908
after the great earthquake
making a connection between past
and present.

The house resembles a Mediterranean villa
and links
the earthquake to the volcanic destruction
of ancient Pompeii.

Each linked to each
I'm planning a house to look like a jet crash
to connect the present with the way the planet
will look over the next thousand years.

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Of Suns And Worlds

     for Jessica

Pink cotton candy in the pine trees
my assemblages looking
fine
hanging on my bedroom wall in morning light
after worrying about their (aughh!) meaning
last night.

My dried grass imbedded in handmade paper
with dried grass laid on a photograph
of dried grass under an ink drawing on
a transparency and water-colored engraving
of dried grass entitled even this alchemy
converting each moment into the next
forges locks on your heart had seemed
trite
and a trifle overdone.

Drawing with my finger in the air
does any of this exist?

---

This Script Has A Butt Shot

     for Jillian

Shooting video in Echo Canyon
picking up voices of Mexican children
bouncing off the walls— I dance freeform
in the Piñon pines, spooking a murder of crows

Cut to
Ghost Ranch
I'm wearing black
a man with a briefcase
walking through the desert
I work out a bit where my clothes
are a rippling specter floating on a mirage lake
I jump out of my suit, drop my briefcase
run stark naked toward the highway
a car passes in the distance
dissolve

Accidentally left on, the camera sways
catching our torsos at odd angles
hands rolling a cigarette
smoke and mirrors
hands driving

Chatting about freedom and responsibility
and the need to awaken the sacred
in our present commercial
progressively degraded
mode of being

A wrap, after we shoot the sunflower room
sunflower wallpaper sunflower hotpads clock calendar cups
and curtains— you in a sunflower apron cooking plastic sunflowers
serving up sunflower soup in sunflower bowls
on a sunflower tablecloth without
a hint of script

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Love's Garden

Eden in fire.
Eden in water
and air.

In these elements,
alone and still—
I feel Love's garden.