Kayaking

Sitting inches from warm river water
I paddle against the current. Pulling
and scraping bottom I dock to climb
stone terraces where water spills
laughing into black pools below.
Sun echoes off  walls smoothed
and sculpted by wind. Hundreds
of years worth of wind still scribing
away hard edges. I want to lay my
cheek against the firm bulges
above me.

Dry wind peels. Howling wind
scrapes. Wet wind makes walls
weep. Hot wind sucks dry. Driven
wind crumbles. Swirling wind
tumbles odd sections away forming
castle fortress parapets.

Now comes a caressing wind that
pursues until the rocks and I both
splay our inward parts wide open.
Left cleft, without scars or a hint of
being forced, I wait for water to
gush and green things to sprout
from here.

Fireworks

Carnations and dahlias

flare straight up, hot,

dripping fire - fierce at first

then fading harmless

before one final burst.

This is how my heart

feels - lit up by an invisible punk,

a breathing coal sharing heat, flaming

my waiting awake.

I'm ready to glow, ready to trace

hints and clues left by the last

one who set the night ablaze.

Here I go. Catch me if you

want to burn. 

Sleepover

I was six, potty trained
many years when I surprised
myself and everyone else by
wetting my pants, wrecking
long laid plans for
an overnighter.

What young boy
curious to
be a man
would want
to try
to enter
that?

I came home for clean clothes
and stayed. I also stayed
ashamed, but came away
from that night intact.

Orcas Love Life

We have lived close to the Puget Sound for many years. Just this weekend we finally saw our resident Orca pods when we were camping out on Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in the Sound.

I stopped taking pictures, because I was missing the fun. Missing the magical moments. One of the females has a black heart framing the entry to her promiscuous parts on her white belly. They are all named. The captains and locals who care, know them by the colors and patterns on their saddles and the shape of their dorsal fin. When they die, they disappear. The family is ruled by a matriarch. They stay together for life.

They are tactile and often touch each other with their fins and lie belly to belly even when not breeding.  They roll around and caress each other, smiling all the while.

The things they like most to do are eat, breed, and sleep. In that order. Whatever time is left over, they spend being curious, and playful. Shouldn't we?

Indulgent Sacrifice

Summer comes only 

after strawberries are

willing to bleed full bags 

of life-giving transfusions

filled with sugar

sweetened red

by sunshine's heat.  

They want cut open 

and beg to be

bitten into, leaving

a stain so

everyone knows the 

exact way 

I partook of pleasure

today. 

Sometimes Shalom

whispers like a
will-o-the-wisp,
"I'm with you -
come follow me."

I don't know Hebrew
but surely Shalom
is spelled this way?

I Found a Merry Widow

at the racetrack today. When she said
she was seventy, I almost took the paint
clean off a stock car.  Her husband
of many years retired in '05,
then hurried to die - before

what they had been
waiting for began.

She was there with another man,
one young at heart
who said yes right away

when the racing dream
called him yesterday.

She had tats all over, love colors
permanently inked - reminding her
to decide to choose life,
and say yes to loving again,
and say yes to moving on,

and say yes to throwing away
the cumbersome weight of things.

A tattoo of two hands permanently
reminds her of her first man's
workaholic love that kept dreams
waiting until it was too late.

She was pissed as she missed
him - for this.

Grandkids seek and find the
inked hands hiding, and caress the
flower heart when they hug her warm
skin. They remember grandpa's love
holding them like this.

So does she.

Each flower holds a
memory they get to retouch
over and over again - like when he
balanced his teeth on his head
or put them backwards and upside
down to hear them SHRIEK.

See this other flower? When they touch
this one they see again the cigarettes
he stuck up his nose
or in his ears
to make them laugh.

So does she.

Inked love never wrinkles. When
you touch it, it stays smooth.

So does she.

This woman was light this morning. I borrowed it. 


Evergreen State Fairgrounds Speedway. Richard Petty Race Car Driving Experience. 

I Ponder

Sappho's apple, the 

 one 

left hanging in the tree. 

Were the pickers careless?

Or accidental artists 

who left a dangling 

memory 

for winter's cold forgetting 

when proof is needed, wanted, 

that summer came and 

blossomed here 

as all the world
 can see. 

Being last, the one 

 unpicked 

is a chilly situation. You 

shrivel and dry up by 

way of lonely nights
where no one
 hears you

 wail or moan.

Put me in your basket. 

Enjoy me crisp and juicy. 

Pick me. Eat me.

Sappho, please
don't leave me there
alone. 

Making Fleur de Sel

You labor hard to love me full

as sweat flies off your forehead

mixing with my tears. A salty 

spilling, we fall overboard, to

deep and dark communion places,

flower of the sea reunion spaces.

I dry these lacy crystals,

collect them in a bottle

to shake and  season savory

over all the days ahead.

Loverby is coming home tonight. Lucky, lucky me. I love my farm boy .... and homecomings. 

Waiting

Here I watch a berry begin,
first the flower's middle tousled by
a bee, then the fruited face swells, 

bewhiskered, no juice to give 

until summer carries it to 

me, ripe for wanting, 

ripe for gathering,

ripe for dripping 

down my chin.