A Long Perspective

Category: Poems & Photographs

  • Apricot Moon

    IMG_2519

    Ignition on, the key worn down

    almost straight now,

    on the dashboard,

    a pack of Camels

    lying on maps among rock samples

    and tufts of tamarisk.

     

    Shirtless, you lean forward, turn the key,

    a birthmark flutters over your 6th vertebra,

    the engine roils in the guts of the Subaru,

    purple-gray mountains in the distance.

     

    We lurch through corridors of sand, pitted tracks,

    past tiny signs to Fault Wash, Vista del Malpais,

    a hard right, the key falls to the mat,

    the motor, oblivious, roars on.

     

    At the cliff, the clawed Badlands before us

    baked reddish-gold, dusk gathers up the warmth

    and the waxing gibbous moon rises.

    We lie on our backs in the sand,

     

    the trajectory of our eyes lifts to Perseus,

    son of Zeus, who rode the winged stallion,

    and fights on in the night sky.

    We dream the stories of the ancients

    from this cluster of our beginnings.

     

    FEWalls

     

  • Prism

    IMG_0209_1The glittering water pulses with rainbows,

    tosses off colors, swirling, a flutterance –

    no thought of loss or want or farewell,

    brilliance for a shilling or a dime or naught

    gathering the colors up again to shrug them off,

    twirling into the garden.

     

    Come back! See!

    The crows screech in the firs,

    the raccoons sleep in the fennel

    leaving the leaves tamped down,

    smelling of licorice.

     

    Silently, the crocuses raise their heads,

    clumps of purple, thin leaves arching,

    then, too soon, they fade into the soil.

     

    The bird bath stutters in the wind and rain.

    The waves lapping and overlapping,

    casting off colors with abandon,

    casting off the past,

    casting off you.

     

    FEWalls

  • Transformation

    You are trapped in the gyre,

    drifting in the ocean without oxygen

    in a mass the size of Texas.

     

    You can escape. Lean close.

    You must throw yourself into the endless whirlpool,

    lashed to a barrel.

    You think you will die of fright

    but this is the only way to salvation.

     

    Here you start to shift your muscles into a new shape,

    where the paralyzed learn to walk

    controlling one muscle and then the next.

    The miracle is imagining that you walk.

     

    The sky turns gold, a platterful of sun.

    You will be reassembled!

    Beyond you, a bird-flier comes

    chewing up your doubt with its long red tongue.

     

    See your life whole now

    skimming along the sleek side of a whale

    as it careens from one continent to the next.

     

    FEWalls

  • Communal Life

    The cherry trees shake out their fullness
    the buds all in bloom now
    absorbing the sound of the blue day.

    The photographer must be quick
    as he leans over his camera on the tripod,
    already the lick of green shoots from the tip of the branches,
    the pavement scattered with petals.

    The trees so laden some dip
    almost to the hyacinths,
    yellow and ivory.

    The cats sun themselves in the grass;
    the dogs prance by their owners,
    the lichen covers the gnarled trunks.

    This long tradition on 33rd street,
    the avenue shimmering in pink ,
    so brief,
    so needed.

    FEWalls March 31, 2014

  • Migration

     

     

    The crescent moon cradles Venus,c. FEWalls

    you who have flown south south-east;

    I wave a scarf at the horizon

    where you disappeared.

     

    The flute quiets the transplanted soul

    while the owls are near tonight.

     

    You abandoned your past

    like coils of fishing net,

    torn beyond mending.

     

    Come back and pull me close.

    Let your eyelids close me into your thoughts.

    I will learn to map you and find my way

    past old voices that inhabit your body.

     

    FEWalls