Who You Are

You are the saint 

of salmonberries,

and you fill 

your pen with nectar 

and drink the ink 

until your bed rolls 

down the driveway

on cat-eyed marbles.

[LSS, 3/30/21]

Plain Sight

There is no better way 

to cover the damage 

except with the skin 

of the dead animal.

[LSS 3/30/21]

Diagnostician

A realistic bobcat
creeps through my bedroom
kittenish but still wild, my
mattress shifts keep it at bay.

You brought those spiders and bats
with you from Wisconsin and Kansas,
they grind and sharpen the tools
without your permission.

Perhaps alarm clocks are time bombs
distilled from absorbed dreams,
perhaps your phone app only tracks
the deepening crease of sleep.

[RK, 3/29/21]

Blackberries

It’s time you started your second
blackberry novelette. You’ve scrubbed
your desktop with a pumice stone,
spritzed diluted bleach to remove
juice stains. All to no avail!

Your notebook is spattered with
purple dots. Connect the dots.
You’ve cleared your winter trails,
Now your fine pen is filled with
blackberry juice. I did not forget!

[RK, 3/29/21]

Missed Diagnosis

The spiders are sharpening 

my scissors and knives

and the bats are grinding 

my teeth into flour 

while the app on my phone 

set to record 

the frenzied order of dreaming 

sleeps straight through 

my alarm.

[LSS, 3/29/21]

Spring Break #2

With every hand you throw down four aces.
We talk about a Great Horned Owl chick,
roped off from the trail. The female perched
above, the chick apparently prone
on a branch below her. I wonder if
the prone posture means sleep or death. 

I wonder how you will respond.

[RK, 3/29/21]

The Line

My adoptive mother’s father
worked at Owens-Illinois in Toledo,
Ohio all of his life.

When I was a selfish pre-teen
he took it upon himself
to talk about it.

He described the engineering
needed to design a bottle
with a strong neck,

shaped the outline on paper,
hand trembling, sketching
a wobbly and rough line.

I felt disdain and pity
for his lack of once perfect
manual dexterity.

Now, mornings before sunrise
I sit in the studio for one hour
with 4H and 5H pencils,

patiently sketching seashells
that collect in baskets and bins
like living organisms.

The sweep of implied French curves
distorted by my lack of dexterity.
My conscience says, “this too shall pass.”

[RK, 3/29/21]

Spring Break 3

The breakfast sidewalk table is shaded by buildings
lining the one-way, one-lane brick paved road.

Emma, the young woman at the vegan café
remembers us from eighteen months ago.

It should be enough. It is not enough.

[RK, 3/29/21]

Spring Break 4 (Epiphany)

Once again we are kayaking,
once again you are afraid.
This time it is about getting stuck
in muddy intercoastal shallows.

Once again you deny your fears
flush them down psychic toilets
with your shit and piss, unable to
bring them to the light of day.

I’m stunned, all LLOL and WTF,
waiting to witness your revelation.
Once again the epiphany is postponed
until the next double bladed oar hits water.

[RK, 3/29/21]

Spring Break #5

The resentment I feel
when another adult is driving.

Coddled and ignored,
is it any wonder I cling to the road map

like a life preserver.

[RK, 3/29/21]

Ash

Everything has been diluted
to the point of emptiness.

If this was one of those Zen things
I would be happy. Instead,

sentences begin with “So—”
and “But—” and “I never—”.

Wildfires sweep across the prairie,
brief and necessary. The ash

is supposed to act as a fertilizer.
I’ve forgotten to add the rain.

[RK, 3/29/21]

Treasure Map

My father kept rolls of quarters,
bundles of five dollar bills, in a
safe deposit box. His money
cushioned bonds and diamonds.

My father filled coffee cans with
pennies, stashed the cans beneath
the bathroom sink. He drove five miles
to save fifty cents on potato chips.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

My mother kept a journal, discovered
when I helped turn their mattress.
I never saw it again. Her public declarations were
reduced to Bible study and shouted nightmares.

My mother hated the caregiver role,
but like many, it became her mainstay.
Breaking out of that comfort zone
was impossible at age seventy-six.

The longest part of the journey is
the passing the gate.

Now, I hoard bones, shells, feathers, blank paper,
and shield myself from responsible adulthood.
Now I am wise, foolish,
and unable to pass the gate.

[RK, 3/29/21]

Spring Equinox

It’s a scam of epic proportions,
a biblical flood of propositions,
a plethora of farm fresh prevarications,
a lemon moon squirting juice
            into my eyes.

This was not what I expected.
Is this what I deserved?

Only stories from outside my life
can hold your attention.

This is corrupt and unreasonable.
I’m tired of being blasted
            with citric acid.

This is not what I deserved.
This is what I’ve come to expect.

[RK. 3/29/21]

The Never Ending Story

I could be your one-man bitch fest
venting spleen to sixteen compass points.

I’ll persevere. I’m no apocryphal saint
sprouting arrows or asps.

I know who you are when you
interrupt me just to shut me down.

I’ll continue talking. I’m always assured
of our unerring consistency.

[RK, 3/29/21]

Spring Break 1

Obverse. Reverse. Mainly verse.

Distress set to the test, you’ve seen
through me. I’ll attest to your

vested interest, the cunning way
you allow the light to come in.

[RK, 3/28/21]

Diagonal Lines

Purple seashells from the Pacific Ocean and
orange seashells from the Atlantic Ocean—
neatly arranged on the studio work table.

Here is a connection circulating like arrows on a map.
Here are the sparkles in the scrubbed and tumbled
exoskeletons.

Calcium carbonate basic to all snails and bivalves
across the thin Goldilocks zone of the blue planet.
The water croons and seduces. We listen.

[RK, 3/28/21]

Reclamation

A strange circumstance

for the third day of spring,

but why question the light

when it comes at you

that way and why not

reflect that light 

back to its source  

with the foxed mirror 

that there is still 

time to recover 

from the recycling bin.

[LSS, 3/22/21]

Creative Process

I whipped life 

into remission while

the soup boiled 

onto the floor 

covered with decades 

of unswept losses 

now creeping into 

my lap and asking 

for another bedtime 

story.

[LSS, 3/17/21]

 

Morning Poem

1.

A ball of wire,

a wall of fire,

an unrequited 

desire to be

inside, to be

outside, to be 

on the other side

of all these

winter clothes.

2.

Start with the start,

the startle,

the resolution to live

inside the rubble,

to throw the rocks

back into the quarry.

[LSS, 3/16/21] 

Daylight Saving Time

It’s not that we’re against the concept, per se, 

it’s just that it’s wearing thin along the creases, 

and we’re not sure how many more years 

of folding and unfolding that one single hour 

can take before it falls apart forever.

[LSS, 3/15/21]

Weather Report

The weather vane attached

to my linear imagination,

queasy from vertigo and bloody 

fingers spinning a carousel 

of sleeping mannequins,

flew off the rooftop during 

a panic attack this morning.

[LSS, 3/15/21]

Albatross

Prevailing winds run ahead of you,
and fashion daily migration statistics.

Ballast is meant to be released.

You have access to the satellite.

Listen to the global report and
enjoy global anticipation.

Look at the weather vane attached
to the roof of your linear imagination.
That aching spin pulls you away. 

“Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung.”
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[RK, 3/14/21]

Albatross

I hope you will understand my need 

to find a new migration route;

the old pattern is beyond restoration,

and add to that the fact   

that I could never find a place 

to land with all this freight.

[LSS, 3/12/21]

Loose Weave

That hot air balloon basket 

is an illusion, a mirage of wistful thinking 

appliquéd to a shiny satellite 

reporting the morning weather.

[LSS, 3/12/21]

Lift (A Breath Away)

Wind beneath the curlew’s wings
blows past me, taunting to lift.
It stalls in tangled mangroves,
unaware of its own capabilities.

I look at my hand’s liver spots, wrinkles,
pulsing veins, crooked nails,
Wonder when the wind
will pull them away.

[RK, 3/12/21]

Galimatias

First, formulate a plan
in the relationship laboratory.

Take away all the conundrums and
reduce the diet regimen to plain sugar.

Now, hard and clear as water ice,
there are no side effects.

You will notice the empty sky.
You will crave stars.

[RK, 3/11/21]

Restoration

From this ancient seabed,
a drowsy garden
leans into my urgent hands.

Rosettes of foxglove breaking 
the rain-packed earth. 

Flawless prairie cut
into rectilinear
fields, counties, time zones
amid rust-encrusted trucks, 
shovel blades, and spindles 
of elderly barbed wire fencing.

Not flatly perfect, but
raking upward toward
the western edge.

[LSS, writing, 1992 + 3/9/21 — RK, arrangement 3/10/21]

Sketches For The Person You Wish You’d Wake Into Every Morning

You fold those sketches into
paper airplanes and origami dragonflies.

Set loose, they establish new
North American migration patterns.

Your identity is a tightly woven
hot air balloon basket.

Following, you effortlessly
Set loose the counterpoints.

[RK, 3/10/21]

Island Salvage

Rosettes of foxglove breaking 

the rain-packed earth 

amid rust-encrusted trucks, 

shovel blades, and spindles 

of elderly barbed wire fencing.

[LSS, 3/9/21]

Sleepy Time 

A pile of spent tea bags, 

a loose leaf atlas of dreams, 

and sketches for the person 

you wish to wake into 

tomorrow morning.

[LSS, 3/7/21]

Pandemic Anniversary

One whole year processed 

through the collective gut 

of a colony of worms,

warm, velvety soil now 

containing the memory 

of all those dinner parties 

I threw every night 

when I tossed the kitchen scraps

onto the compost pile.

[LSS, 3/7/21]

Black Hole

I heard the news today that the world 

hadn’t ended when I closed up for winter.

The first grey whale came back in December, 

but I wasn’t looking out to sea then.

[LSS, 3/7/21]

Some Questions about Kites

Are you tethered to your kite 

by a heavy string?

Are you that bird flying freely 

on long, narrow wings?

Have you written a bad check 

I shouldn’t bother to cash?

[LSS, 3/7/21]

The Halfway Point Between The Quick and The Dead

The false warm weather in a sub-tropical climate, falsified, cracked life expectancy, attempting to figure out the carbon cycle and how my footprint balances what was once natural. The panoply of the human world, the impossible complexity of the natural world.

I add them together and get more than the sum of the parts.

With nothing planned the days collapse like dead trees.

I weave the limbs into a raft. It sinks in the river. The river stops flowing, flows backwards, dries up completely. I’m unable to distinguish what was riverbed from the erased landscapes.

Lingering sets in. The solution is to divest. Garbage can, recycling bin, compost pile. There are no ashes today. Lethargy pins me to the afternoon.

I’m sleeping, dreaming—awake, daydreaming.
Empty stomach, empty mind.

I’m lying again.

I can’t keep doing this. I keep doing this.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”—Hamlet

[RK, 3/7/21]

March 5, 2021

March arrived on schedule,

but no one noticed 

the light feathering down 

onto the earth, our lives 

still hibernating behind masks 

and hands parched from obsessive 

washing and counting the minutes 

for the perfect cup of tea.

March arrived on schedule,

and no one wrote a word 

until today.

[LSS, 3/6/21]

Turning Season

This is the robin 

that reminded me

that it was time 

to stir the bed

to turn up worms 

to coax a mate

to build a nest

to say what we 

are thinking.

[LSS, 3/6/21]

Internalizing the Mad Scientist

A software filter might change appearances, but
even with a mad scientist face
we’ll know it is you.

Family and dinner guests will know.
Coyotes and foxes will wail their plaints.
Strangers will feel ill at ease.

Reduced to cut and paste.
How can the overloaded systems
create a third system?

[RK, 3/6/21]


Coyotes

Those coyotes have been with you since
puberty, awareness, and independence.
You chose to forget their names,
even as you cling to their tails.

Now reduced to organic passions, and
far removed from their origins
they are still relative to your “I am”.
You must follow them through the forest.

Forget the laudatory fairy tales.
Forget the never implemented intentions.
Reread the diaries you compiled
in their footprints.

[RK, 3/6/21]

N+1 Redundancy

I reduce the most affable memories
to sepia sketches that could delineate any life.
Each backup plan has its own backup plan.

Möbius Strips, Klein bottles, and the infinity symbol
throw stones in my path. I’m my own archenemy,
caught in the bare branches of an October cottonwood.

The core rotten, the bones of archetypal whiteness,
the slow fade as nature erodes the skin on my face.
Coyotes squat by my door with their autograph albums.

Easily sidetracked with rabbit holes, I join marble statues
in the museum of possible side effects.
Infinity is too much to compass in one day.

“In nature’s infinite book of secrecy a little I can read.”—Antony and Cleopatra

[RK, 3/6/21]

Two Seasons

I want the light 
to be like that again.

The way a spring morning lit
the alley fence in a scale of
yellow.

Ginseng sharpened my visual appetite.
Hunger sharpened my artistic
sensibilities. Words, sought,
wrought, fashioned into existential
sonnets, pantoums, rondeaus, and
verses, blank and free.

Days were taut as cables,
unstable as isotopes,
lived like fabulous fables.

Winter nights were lit
with yellow constellations that
prickled like prickly pear pads.

We were beneath the landing pattern
for the Air Force Base.

They came in low and made icicles redundant. 

This was after my peregrinations
with one more in a long line of
uncaring—I’ll just say ‘people’—
as I don’t know the appropriate words
for empty relationships.

Memories either blossom or chill.
Daffodils at park entrances, or
yellowed lawns in well-tended suburbs.

I’ve lost the summer and autumn,
they shriveled to mere days.
Days are never enough.
Play with the light.
Let hunger be your lion and your clown.

“You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.”—A Midsummer Night’s Dream

[RK, 3/5/21]

Coronavirus #5

I plan to travel through a landscape
untouched by dirty hands.

The city is four hundred and fifty-six
years old. She wears it well—although
I can’t see beneath the evenly laid
cobbles and chicanery.

I’ll bring flashlights and
philosophical concepts.
They peel off like t-shirts
and dip their academic toes
in the Atlantic Ocean.

I imagine swimming out
into the Gulf Stream
off the coast of
North America.

I hope. I care.
I’m actually lying to you.

Follow my kite, it marks
my passage through a landscape
untouched by unwashed hands.

[RK, 3/5/21]