Solstice Tide
Meteor Cloud
Symbolic lasso
noctilucent curlicue
fifty miles up close
Things left out of the bible
I have to force the door shut
against the nightmare world outside
it gets in any way
hundred-leggers
under the floorboards
The street is a skirmish
one enters into
Stringbean hid his money
in the chimney of a humble cabin
found many years later
it could no longer be spent
Estelle fled toward the Cadillac
Frost on her in the morning
Stringbean's killers missed
money sewn into his pants
his trademark joke pants
they stole his notorious hat
in a dirty parting deed
helped convict them
Nashville 1969
Murmuration of Stars
falling dishes
emblazoned with fruit bats
never reach bottom and break
cycle around the centripital belt
tumbling excited in mid space
glancing off others
in the milky way parthenon
places are palimpsest
to the paleontologist
wave after wave got bigger
until the beach tumbled away
and all was sea
Another million years of hominids
crack in the accepted timeline
the subterraneans swarm out
To join again the living
perhaps get a bite
adding to the long lines
Walls of painted figures
mummified cats waited
in the priestess's tomb
Soul colors speak directly
for the soul entombed
the sea beyond the West
Absent pleasure craft
estuary's blank mirror
sun makes slanted eyes
Foot tap on the rail
gull feels it but can't tell where
watches for hand-outs
1.
Wind and rain blow past
secretive trees roil and writhe
storm outside and in
2.
The street's sleeping rough
furtive traffic forces itself
the night stilled by rain
3.
Jack London station
insistent deserted dark
trains sound in the rain
Tell us your dream of dreams
your most forbidden forests
where nothing is impossible
it seems
Slender trees grew in too close
labyrinthine thickets
of briar and rose
Bears and painted wolves
the theater comes only at night
moon flowers and night herons
Between Our Lady of Lourdes
and Christ the Light
Fairyland and the estuary
Garden of earthly delight
December 2018
