Pacifica

You moved here when your boyfriend fell ill.
You found that you loved it:

A gray-blue bungalow set back
from sheer sand cliffs

off which paragliders dive
like dandelion seeds;

they drift into the thick-as-chowder fog
that trundles in from the ocean's throat.

I wondered, as you poured me a Coke,
why you were jealous of me --

why you didn't instead pity the doomed, cute
party boy stuck living in the City.

The box of a jigsaw puzzle, still warm from his ghost
sits innocent, childlike, on the coffee table.

You neglect to put on music, and we are lulled
by the water's roar and crying seagulls.

If I were you I would never pull my roots up
from mother Pacific's edge.

Sausalito

That ferry trip
to Marin was the one --

that's where our hearts parted.
We couldn't bear

to promenade arm in arm.
Instead we split up; I walked

alone by the docks.
I set out to see

galleries filled with locals'
depictions of the sweep of Bolinas shore

or of hushed, cloister-like
Muir Woods, all green and black.

At the arranged time
that afternoon

I joined you where you stood
in line to return to the City, the fog.

From then until we went to bed
we exchanged nary a word.

Ad Infinitum

Killing costs at least a buck.
Laugh until you drop.
I promise I will, too.

Look, at spiral eyes, tight
as the end of your wife's
life with you.

Boy bitch, you thought
me the hippie with the didgeridoo.
Eat me, drink me,

break me in two.  My mouth
fooled so many of you.
Soaking in senseless

need, you're a pair
to stare that hard.
You envy me mine.

Take my eyelids
and pay me attention.
I'm too much to mention.

Shoot me through the walls --
all I wanted was a clue,
your excuse.

Wadi

Scream -- a Tomcat:
a blur and afterburn.

Sere field of rocks,
jagged as the panicked talk

from near that mud-brick
hovel.  Shots fired;

a metallic ping:  the echo
hangs in the air (cold wash of fear)

with the choking red dust.
God must be with us.

Hunting Ground

Look now
from Liberty Hill
traversing the bowl-shaped town:

A train of pale mist;
it hovers above
Mission Creek,

hugging the contours
of the now-buried
old canal.

The hard, bright sun
will burn it off
by 9 o'clock.

With it will go
the ghosts of hunters
who stalked this land

when whales spouted
in the dark-green bay
and no man overstayed

__________his welcome.

Unconsoled

Stars pierce the dark void hard --
unpitying, glaring, static -- when seen
__________from beyond the veil of sky.
It is the air we need to breathe
through which we spy them
__________that makes them shimmer and blink
_____as though they were fragile,
ours being their maternal focus.
We read their peregrinations
__________to be fates' signs,
but it is over heartless eons they, unmoved in truth, shine
and would though charted by no one's eye.