B&W

Why are you trying to add 

so much color to this room 

which can never replace 

your lost vision.

[LSS, 5/29/21]

Speakeasy

A frail voice whispering a combination

of numbers and letters and a series 

of knocks on the door and the bird feeder

swinging in the wind dropping only a single

seed despite your wild tossing in the midst

of a dream you can never catch up to.

[LSS, 5/29/21]

Flamethrower

The library book 

you abandoned after 

the second chapter

and choose to burn 

rather than admit 

defeat.

Your fingers singed

and sooty while

you finish reading

the book between

your clean white

sheets. 

[LSS, 5/29/21]

In

that first breath lasts all day
I’ll go gray, cream, taupe, tan, raw umber
burnt orange, orange, red-into-grass-green
turquoise tourniquet
latched to a sensation of well-deserved energy
algebraic divination methodology
trapped in a pile of library books
the forsaken montane mythology
distressed and compressed
the first breath takes it in
and holds it

[RK, 5/29/21]

One Thing Leads to Another

Sending out a query and finding

a puddle of rat piss in the corner

the next day.

[LSS, 5/25/21]

5/25, 5:25

The cat in the dishwasher

licking the herring plate,

a pair of Wilson’s warblers 

on their first day back,

and all those cards

I’ve thrown into the air

divining my way into 

this one minute.

[LSS, 5/25/21]

No Thunder

The end-of-May chill pleasing 

only the rhubarb, horseradish, 

and blood sorrel.  

An orphaned lamb suckling 

my ear, her umbilicus a lightning 

bolt in cold drizzle.

[LSS, 5/24/21]

Road Trip

Only rain in the forecast 

and nothing to do

about the basil and tomatoes 

malingering on the window sill 

since January, except schedule 

my retreat to the Northwest 

banana belt, the rain shadow 

of the Olympic Mountains, 

with my uprooted seedlings 

belted in the back seat and my fists 

clenched and ready to crack 

open the sky.

[LSS, 5/24/21]

Lacuna

1.
a moment like any other moment
what brings this afternoon to life
useful is a useful word
all-purpose for shifted angles of sunlight
and engendered shadows
the penumbra of my intent

a garden shredded with the onset of
end-of-May heat, furrowed soil
pensive and aloof following a
thorough tearing-out-ofs
awful tree limbs want to hug me
a spattering of my imagined rain
 
2.
your journal words invested with too much memory
when only curly serifs and colored ink fill in the blanks
interest accrues as pages turn and take their places
in your unchanging past

far sailing ships are built on land
perforce a flush of wing-like pages
will lead you to, into, and away from
your dry dock

[RK, 5/24/21]

Bears 2

have you circled around to
your dainty kitchenette
the elusive click as you
pour water from a teakettle
blackberry stains on granite
countertops, flour caked apron,
the slight almost-burn at the edge
of the crust, birthed anew

you’ve cleared the trail, found
a Möbius strip loop leading
back to the pantry, spring pan,
leaky faucet, pie filling
full of promise, grandmother’s recipe
for happiness encapsulated
in handfuls, pecks, and bushels
reach in and pull out stars.

[RK, 5/24/21]


Bears 3

you try to avoid excess simple sugars
opting instead for complex carbohydrates
yet there’s that bucket hidden
in your studio, where you sprinkle
white grains on dark stitched artwork
it soaks into the paper, hidden from
well-meaning and critical friends

the pawprints of childhood wallpaper
your linear houses, your daydream of
thumbs, plums, a cooling blackberry
moment on a depression-era windowsill
a scattering of rice on the forest trail
the trousseau, the bear, the bride unbound

[RK, 5/24/21]

Bears 4

his startled look when he finds
that window unlatched and open
burglary tools forgotten in the
waves of your even breathing

[RK, 5/24/21]


Embarrassment

literal, with flushed skin and speeded up
heart rate
or
figurative, with glued together
broken cups
or
allusive, with the garden stand-in
in the wings

[RK, 5/24/21]


Your Image of a Plastic Turquoise Chair Caught in a Fence

sequestered beneath layers of Cambrian rock
slate for the records you make of each
autistic tic removed from the commonplace

I admire your gem-colored persistence
your ability to see ‘sitting’ where there is
only discarded furniture

I want to say useless, but nature teaches
that everything has a purpose, preordained
positions on the wheel of fortune

you’ve decided to take it with you, in
memory, dreams, words, images, in
the bundle you found on the doorstep

the racing heart and chipped serving dish
function like a bird’s bill, built for
service, it holds the promise of repetition

in layer upon layer upon layer

[RK, 5/24/21]

5.29 P.M.

those shadows irritate me
when really it is the angles of light
capturing my attention, the lines
from the sun to the tilted Earth

how I notice the shift of angles
with the passing of and cycle
of seasons
the frustrating relentlessness

[RK, 5/24/21]

Vast

The wide channels of the Salt Springs estuary
kayak side swipes clumps of mangroves
ash brown and gray, hunter green, teal, chartreuse
halted in sea grass shallows

an orange dragonfly with transparent wings
casts a shadow on a white paddle blade
against a distant, edge of the world
Gulf of Mexico horizon line

[RK, 5/23/21]

Salad Days

I live the memory of an Albuquerque alley fence
lit with fragments of yellow light
how it encapsulates and delineates
the beauty of the natural world
how it lingers with me for four decades
stuck there on a summer morning

now, a newly painted brown gate set at morning’s acute angle
pulls me forward into the day, says
look
and my eyes touch and touch
sage, burnt orange, burnt umber, cream, sienna, canary,
Naples yellow, milk chocolate brown, titanium dioxide white
and
ash, charcoal, ink, or French gray shadows

I can only imagine the slow levels of molecular decay
the breaking down of what we hold to be true,
useful, or worthwhile
the push forward to recognize how much we need
to believe in the persistence of objects
yet knowing how everything dissolves and fades

but now this gentle morning tango
of color, light, and shadow
this moment infused
this beckoning of grace

[RK, 5/20/21]

End of Story

A turquoise plastic chair 

tangled in a barbed wire fence.

[LSS, 5/19/21]

The Hydroponic Basil I Brought Home from Payless Grocery 

He finds it an embarrassment,

wrongly revealed roots without hairs,

and rushes out to bury it in the garden.

[LSS, 5/19/21] 

Berry Season

Certain people 

are coming back 

to me these nights 

I keep the bedroom 

window open.

[LSS, 5/19/21]

Two Voices

We pedaled a stolen tandem 

all over town that summer.

Our favorite place was the cemetery, 

all cool shadows and granite slabs.

We didn’t know about the unmarked 

graves. We didn’t know until we 

wanted to bury the bicycle and found

that all the plots were full.

[LSS, 5/18/21]  

What I Didn’t Tell You

The first rufous hummingbird 

returned last Thursday. 

I know how long you’ve 

been waiting, but I wanted 

you to know what I know 

about the waiting game.

[LSS, 5/17/21]

Mid-Morning Meals

bee shadows on sandy soil
the deciduous hum of tinnitus
filtered cars and air conditioners

mathematical symbols define
human agriculture efforts
consumer driven food equations

a heron’s spread wings cast
shadows on the water, she draws
fish, without numerology

[RK, 5/17/21]

Emily

paper was a luxury, and she wrote on
old envelopes, torn scraps, and thought
herself successful and happy, what I
imagine to be complacent and complete

I have twelve thousand, five hundred sheets
of printer paper, one and a half dozen lined
notebooks, and I, too, am complacent
yet incomplete

my courtesy feels embarrassment
in her presence, as I use a psychological
yardstick to ascertain her livelihood, her
daily ration and ratio of concept to paper

[RK, 5/15/21]

5:45 P.M.

The same late afternoon 

slant throwing shadows 

on the wall, the same trees, 

the same darting swallows,

the same nesting sparrows,

the same hungry owls,

never nostalgic about our 

ritual return.

[LSS, 5/11/21] 

Rehearsal

We will always be beginners 

rearranging the chairs 

waiting for the revised script.

[LSS, 5/11/21]

Untitled

The title comes last

when I open a crack

in the composition  

using a few words 

as a pry bar 

and break open the door 

to the hermit’s hut.

[LSS, 5/10/21]

Carnivale

I can’t see past the fragrance of the white lilies 

you sent me yesterday into an oxymoronic void

between lucid dreams and sleep deprivation,

and now I’m riding the zebra in a carousel 

of leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas.

[LSS, 5/10/21]

Acadia

The tricolor and star painted on
the sides of buildings. A flag
flapping above an estuary hummock.
Cape Bray-tawn vs. Cape Breat-ten.

A woman’s lilting cadence as she places
The Rose and Rooster vegan special of the day

on the countertop.

[RK, 5/9/21]

Lawrencetown Beach

wind off the North Atlantic
pushes sea fog landward
the moment, the moment
the winding sheet of a cold day

a shingle of smooth stones
big as fists or small as marbles
piled in flowing fractal dollops
handfuls of solid round-osity

brown sand between seawall and sea
smooth angle and devoid of shells
novice surfers sway in swells
wet suits punctuate the gray waves

I’m rooted in rocks, water, and sky,
the moment, the moment
my tangled thoughts straightened out
and laid flat to dry

[RK. 5/9/21]

Why Every Day Counts

bees tickle yellow mustard flowers
three, five, seven, twelve

easy to see, brown dots moving
with resolve and dedication

I’m remembering the hum of
beehives at a lavender farm

after Hurricane Dorian crossed
over Nova Scotia, after

the intimacy brought by the storm
still present tense, now this memory
 
of a northern latitude and chilled air
blown in from the Gulf of St. Lawrence

the wrack and ruin along the
Northumberland Shore

the varieties of lavender
striping the side of a hill

the persistence of bees
surviving a storm

[RK, 5/8/21]

Your Octopus Heart 2

In the rush toward resolution
I trip over your octopus heart
fall, feel my hip hit the tiles.

I wear shoes in the house
to avoid bruising my toes
thinking, it’s come to this.

The hard graphite of pencils
sharpened with a razor blade.
Several points make up a line.

Books, saucepans, clothespins
and neatly folded linens
remain static until activated.

Your octopus heart remains unbruised.

[RK, 5/8/21]

Statement

Improvisational piece 

moving outward 

from the center, 

gradually becoming 

wider, longer,

days approaching 

summer solstice.

[LSS, 5/6/21]

Framing Device

It’s the illusion that makes you 

the work hanging on the wall.

[LSS, 5/6/21]

Interplanetary

Telegrams are so 19^th century
you’re over there on the crater rim
close enough for semaphore or
smoke signals.

The light that has lighted this world
also lights Mars. Prisms never lie.

[RK, 5/5/21]

Here on Earth

Each week I check the lost and found
for messages, mittens, mixed metaphors.

I lean in for selfies and the
spider crabs go sideways
laughing all the way.

The day and tides timed just so,
and suddenly the night 
fills with random humans
photographing yet another
identical sunset.

[RK, 5/5/21]


Night Studio

Miniscule insects flit beneath the lamp
your quintessential dot against blank sheets,
and my left leg fell asleep under the table an hour ago.

People ask about gathering and acquiring.
Business strategies are such a burden.

Handwritten tags pile up in the corner and
reproduce when I’m not looking. 

[RK, 5/5/21]

Gifted

Objects I randomly encounter, 
like a broken loggerhead shell

fluctuating in the surf
like collapsed hot air balloons. 

[RK, 5/5/21]

Morning Practice

Shadows run evenly across the table
shading delicate seashells with the same
organic pseudopod
every morning.

Like a pencil tip constantly in need
of sharpening, like a
field guide leaving me
wanting more.

[RK, 5/5/21]

Specious Sunrise

A little bit of the original investment
is lost every quarter.

The transfer of funds from one account
to another is always incomplete. 

There is no such thing as a balanced
checkbook, or a perfect balance.

The corpus callosum splits and
takes away any chance of balance.

I stop understanding
what I see, expect to see.

[RK, 5/5/21]

When The Alarm Clock

I set aside time each morning for
self care, but unreasoning, that
regimen melts of its own accord

fuzzy images of future days
flash past at the speed of glue and
I am nonplussed

market collard greens wilt beneath
close inspection, gas prices
fill quadratic equation lacuna

that foppish self care easily diverted
with coffee, sunrise, bird song, and
cute emojis

[RK, 5/5/21]


What I Remember

a single black vulture tilting above an
August noonday granite mountaintop

black bee swarms moving like
schools of fish

solitude measured in water bottles and
cherry Life Savers

trees and stone walls tagged with
chartreuse surveyor tape

[RK, 5/5/21]

Inventory

Case Study: Dreaming of Mangoes

Solstice

Four Days in August

Rediscovered Island

Quarks

Ghost Fish

Frost Queen

Fault Lines

A Little White Landscape

Emerging Dream

New Moon

Constellation #1

Constellation #2

Crossroads

Black Line

Three Voices #2

Random Memories

Sitting on a Park Bench on a Sunny Afternoon

[LSS, 5/3/21]

Disappearing Act

If I can touch the wall

I am too far away

from the beautiful idea

of what a lit match can do 

in the hands of a magician.

[LSS, 5/3/21]

Day Trip

How many lists do we need

before we are ready to leave?

Why can’t we simply open the door 

and walk away until we are tired 

and then just fall asleep?

[LSS, 5/3/21]