Spirals (Memory Sandia Crest, New Mexico)

skunk cabbage along the trail
avalanche boulders, quaking aspen
zigzag dirt, random riprap steps

on Sandia Crest a nutcracker makes plans
ravens strut across asphalt, glean scraps
house sparrows dot chain link fences

autumn’s muddy Rio Grande to the west
beyond it a petroglyph landscape
where time is measured with thin layers

desert varnish, owl pellets, rodent bones
spirals connecting ancient storyteller hands
with scoured mountainside paths

[RK, 5/26/2023]


Craving Warmth (Memory Albuquerque, New Mexico)

hands scented with gum Arabic and solvents 
fluorescent lights switched off 
heat left on at seventy-two degrees 
printing presses settle into dreams 
Earth’s winter tilt brings new constellations 
starlight prickles bare cottonwoods 
I imagine the warmth of distant stars 

a cold adobe on Dartmouth Street 
thermostat turned low to save money 
plastic bread bags washed and reused 
scrubbed until the printed labels are lost 
clipped to curtains above a kitchen sink 
drips refract morning’s weak sunlight 

[RK, 5/26/2023]

Flatland (Memory Flagstaff, Arizona)

judicious polygonal Flatland daguerreotypes
lulled to sleep along with Tom Sawyer and Jim
rafting effortless rivers-to-end-all-rivers
balanced on a new age equinox cusp
tentative, precise: sibilant with aspirations
usually sequestered in dusty perennial memories

force-fed stereotypes jangled into high desert wind
crumpled grasshopper husks beneath the tiller’s web
narrow what-you-will beets surviving frost
bush beans dried to compressed flatulence
dewy leaves patina straw-ensconced squash

Thai pepper bushes reconfigured as potted house plants
Pompeii moth finality of sunflower whorls
owl, raven, piñon jay, kestrel, nighthawk
antelope and deer, field mouse and vole
inexorable mesh of autumn’s greasy gears

Arctic cold front, rapid mountaintop snow
dill weed and choking vinegar steam, stream
horse manure and kitchen compost posit
kitsch images against winter’s bad breath

[RK, 5/26/2023]

Run-Away Dream

Luanne keeps arriving
plants her pickup truck 
outside your front door
years later lavender flourishes

you sharpen the scythe
wheat waves wash
your storm windows 
into Possession Sound

[RK,5/26/2023]

World’s Largest Ball of String Redux (Overworked Seamstress)
 
the thread, the needle, the bassinet
mending the marionette’s tatted and tattered
harlequin masquerade, yet
she never counted the cost
of a lost stitch widening into a gap of night 
sticky as flypaper starlight

remember that rattling automaton fortune teller
in a dusty warehouse they called a museum?
she needs more then five cents to make a go of it
riches, health, many children, happiness, joy

like you
she senses the falling sky, the five worst things 
that could happen to her
prior to her actual disappearance

[RK, 5/26/2023]