Fucking

The soft wooden clasp cracks open with a snap,
then the sibilant rasp of our bodies on the sofa
is the only sound we make after that.
This life passes to quickly -- only half
of yours has been lived.  I'm sure you know by now
how we spend so much of our time seeking happiness;
we've found it for a spell, in the lingering sun.
The air smells like carnations and our wine, now drunk.

San Francisco 2000

Face daybreak, clear-eyed.
Rise to the toothpaste-stained
bathroom mirror.

Out the window, a clearer
view of downtown in fog --
wilderness of glass.

This is someone else's place.
You met at the Crow Bar
night before last:

two dates.  It might be love.
For once, on the window sill,
not pigeons, but a dove

struts back and forth.
So you were born up North,
then descended, angel from above...

A dot-com job,
a Tenderloin box,
a new heart you've lost.

Steinbeck Country

Amber sunset
_____haze of this day's
traffic_____and_____labor

hangs there.
__________Mother Califia's
draped robes._____She bears

in her arms
_____sheaves of corn.
Catholicism, Indian scorn

thread up a trail
__________West, beyond
the coastal range.

Here in the valley
_____we welcome night;
light_____pollution_____estranged

the stars.  Frogs sing
_____us to sleep
__________anyway.

Oracle

Pale blue smoke wreathes a mountain.
Black shadows birth vultures

that circle over a point in the distance:
divinity and dhamma: bones picked clean.

Ask the pine trees, "What does it mean?"
The wind is a wide-eyed gray rush, wordless.