Watercolor Poems

Streetwise

 

 

Stormlight for the taking,

a coyote pulls the sky behind him, slides

between the natural world and

the manufactured one. Pauses

by some looping palm fronds,

noses the gate

to mystery’s back yard

as the couple who spend winters here

take grey steps

around the cul-de-sac so slowly

the sun turns back

to give the day an extra hour of light.

Small world, walking sticks

know the way around it

while nose-high on a cloud

it’s easy to cross

from daytime into night, as much

in tune with concrete as

with gravel trails. Not a movement

too slight to pick up on, with all

senses sharpened to a point

he’s aware that even

 

in a mild December there’s a chill

waiting for the moon

to guide it from the desert.

Chill

 

 

Desert cold this morning, following

a Curve- billed thrasher

cholla to cholla, close

to the ground. Thorns

in the call, a dip and

a rise before

disappearing. It’s a day the seasons

will not claim. Saguaros

can’t read the sky, they don’t

know whether it will rain

tonight or send

a shower of stardust down. The mesquites

swear allegiance to the sparrows

and the sparrows to

the creosote. The light has no sense

of the temperature, doesn’t

know how cold it feels

to stand and wait for March

to rescue February. Yellow blooming

Brittlebush, call and response

from bird to hidden bird. Sunlight

balanced on the ridge.

A wind without borders

shining on its way from the sky.

 

Rainbird

 

 

The kind of day the sky moves into the house

and the street can’t remember

ever being desert. Darkness owls itself away

leaving mystery behind. The Cooper’s hawk

on the backyard wall doesn’t care

about the human world with all its looking inward

to secrets of the heart and trigger-finger

minds. Just waits

as a cold wind sharpens it claws

passing through; woodpecker be gone, mockingbirds

curb your songs, sparrows take shelter

when the weather doesn’t know which way to fly.

 

Dusk Moth

 

 

It’s chosen a lantana bush

to taste the dusk and sips  light until

there’s only enough for a spirit to see by.

It knew as a larva

this moment would come, foresaw

itself as sleep with wings

and after transformation

be an agent of the unseen.

Stony pathway to the clouds

that darken overhead, Happy hour

 

on Earth and introspection in the sun.

The weight of a wish in a windstorm,

Sphinx moth holding fast

to the place it was assigned

 

in the planet’s first, explosive moment

that created snowdrifts, storms and

a desert for the cereus to bloom.

 

Following the Night

 

 

It’s three steps down the rocks

connecting night with day

 

to the gravel where animals

dream with their feet: javelina

 

between arroyo banks that sleep

while they hurry to reach water

 

before it turns to light; coyotes

from yip yip to a howl

 

in which the human ear

hears loneliness; raccoon

 

searching for whatever

lies left and right of a mesquite

 

or in the fallen core of a saguaro.

Earth moves easily

 

into day, tilts in all directions,

darkness on the run,

 

nose to the ground, tail

high, desert memory.

 

Night Vision

 

 

Quietly the waking stones

begin to move downslope. The decaying

thread in a fallen saguaro’s core

vibrates. An owl coughs out

the final bones of daylight

and folds another soul beneath her wing.

Her work goes on,

 

remembrance and comfort mixed

with the sudden flexing

of a claw. Hers is the ghost flight ferrying

between what’s known and

only guessed at. Accountant of the dark AM,

she asks what spirits know,

 

her calls are sound that floats

from where she turns her moonface

better to see the stars

nailing the sky

to infinity.