That Evening Red
There is a skull in the sun.
A blind black spot smiling
down on the darkening green.
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The horizon burns beyond
the field. Doom-red and mauve clouds
shatter and the fragments swarm.
​
The red is lying on the pond,
a killer. Now, get closer.
Hold barbwire and climb.
​
Ankle deep in clover.
Hot red through ripped jeans.
The world is a warning.
​
Stand still. A horse stares
from oblivion black eyes.
Turn again to the west.
​
You, the horse, share a skull
with the sun. In this ash gray field
all the bones are smiling.
Cavender Creek
the smoke white sky fell into the west
he goes dressed in reek of mud and moss
spread the green sail trees fulminant before face
this creek slathers snakes spring rains have swollen
brown borders break hear the earth exigent
​
come out in black back into the road to progress
by light of a ghost torch the asphalt whirls in
small diamond seas he stopped and still he heard
the priest-waters mumble catechize the night
fugitive he saw beyond the silhouettes but not
himself in a small sunlit room thrusting brush
cutting his way through like the all-seeing dead
learning to see all things – how they name themselves-
he had fallen into mud sank heart-deep lost a shoe
what a fear was muck-deep deep to life and new
the fingers of trees accused though reached him
helped him extricate and painted with earth
he went up wet-faced to meet the night
the dark road home over dusk-deep fences
calculating stars let fall steady lines of light
the image revived twenty years away
brushstrokes in the depth of green the gaunt moon
banished it’s vacant space howling and begs
restoration now his knuckles graze the sky
stroke and swath reveal return him to where
he was in shadow hunting home not lost
but becoming what the spirit would make him
a part of this place even when parted from place
one more lost son of deities with dead names
and no stories come down he cannot return
​
but will recover all he can trap all in his eye
and the eyes of others because this dubiety
is given – our daily hurt and strange birthright-
​
he imagines a new painting:
​
a lone traveler
leaving an oasis
and vanishing into the interminable desert
That Making Self
before the light ended
in the space between stars
​
it was gifted gold seething in a furnace
an oak embroidered with flames
the house retreating in shadow left
only a footpath rambling westward
​
a human shape looked on the watcher
and the watcher was a child
​
what of this when it returns
will not be shaped by the making self?
even if the words are beyond recall
and the self that was has long receded
the darkness will yet dye itself deeper
and the gold will flare fuller than before
and those stairs will moan underfoot
and so – that old house will live again
with the manic joy of the dead