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]