Keeping Time
The alarm goes off at 4. I will myself to my
feet, not for a grand mission, but to catch
a flight. In the predawn darkness, driving the
101 to the 405, I recite Clifton, Keats, & Limón
The Cost of Mourning: A Sonnet
The oak predates our house. How old
it was when it toppled, I cannot tell:
a tree stands for ages, sees war unfold,
endures tribulations, then in one fell
goes still. I hadn’t time to count its rings:
Guangdon
In Guangdon Province a young father rises early
for work at Doubleeagle Industry Limited, where
he operates the plastic-injection molding machine.
It is rote, if loud and dangerous work…
Englightenment
I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
Sous les pavés, la plage
Too much talk of revolution
makes me hungry, and there
is little in the fridge that makes
one believe in a better world:
Black Friday: A Haiku
Leaves gather like un- sold goods. Need help, asks the rake. Just browsing, I say.
The Naked Eye
Both the atheist and the believer have it wrong.
We are not mere bodies, nor do we have souls.
Heaven would be a room strewn with books
and nary an errand to distract from reading;
A Dream of a Kind of Peace
“Children found ‘butchered’ in Israeli kibbutz…” – CNN
I dream a rocket’s aftermath smells of cracked pepper,
that it sprays not blood and shrapnel but mint leaves,
ice clinking in delicate hand-blown glass; that its
thunder is a hundred-thousand bumblebees come to
pollinate a black-and-white world, devoid of flowers…
Terminal
Not the shaded table by the pool
where I point out a hummingbird eating nectar
and my son asks, “You mean like I eat pizza?”