A reservoir has been carved from the bedrock
and it has been given a fall
a serrated groove of stone
On summer nights smelling of verdant oak,
cedar,
and mostly scents we have not found the proper word for,
this man-made well
trickles in fine spouts of translucent diamond,
though some thick aired
nights, driving alone
the corrugated slope we constructed,
(hand, machine, all from the divine)
sits dry and looks cool to the touch

Other nights, in the newfound love
where rain is abundant,
and words are like grass, free to graze,
the bedrock fall is a torrent, and
was made just for this joy
to spring freely in a noisy susurrus,
confounding the young, and the old more

~

Your tongue is blue, dyed like an old cloth in
Egyptian times, before the assembly machines.
Beautiful blue, made just to hide your red
buds. I feel it would break my heart to tell you.

~

A man near the end of his life
stands at the end of his driveway,
barefoot so he can feel the blacktop
reverberating morning heat, though
the day is only an infant

~

The night my brother was born, a storm
rattled a home I do not at all remember,
my very first, and my grandmother
huddled with me and a flashlight in
our basement, and the bugs were spooked
by the thunder more than the lighting,
all of them come out of their burrows
and webs, scatter brained on our floor,
in their unwitting fear, spooking my
grandmother. So I serenaded her, “Grandma
don’t like bugs! Grandma don’t like bugs!”
I was too young to like or dislike them,
though my blood would insist I settle
on the latter. I do not remember any of this,
but have been told the story on many occasions,
though my grandmother, the only source
to verify the truth or lack, has long gone
senile. She smoked three packs a day,
chomped red meat for all her meals,
and alienated her entire family. She fought
in Korea and will get a royal send off
by the Army when she dies, though only
because no one there had to know her.

I report my formative night with her
as truth, and who would refute that?
Besides, I owe my grandmother
one piece of wisdom: mother’s fail.

~

You are in the bathroom before dinner,
half dressed so that your tanned sides
are pushed outwards over your white skirt,
and it is such an endearing contrast of hues
I cannot help but admire. You have felt
my presence, your busy hands somewhere
I am not looking, and you turn to face me,
hair held up and spouting clips so as to resemble
some water bearing cactus, You give me
a look I have never seen before,
which is quite a gift.

~

Oh curious rhythms of the world,
those above me and below, those I see
and those - most of you - I do not,
you have taught me nothing of this world

~

Every flower I have ever given
to a woman - my lovers, my mother,
even my grandmother - has been stolen,
plucked from an arboretum in the hours
when no one but me, shady figure I am,
is lurking out in the world. I always fear
that the next morning, some couple
will be out on a whim, and their
hearts will fail to leap