Her Shoes are not so Different From Mine

Across the chaparral
toward the mountain I can picture
a young girl’s
bouncing pig tails
a skip from the covered wagon.

She brushes against white sage,
turns to the pungent perfume
that dances in the air unseen
then turns again to the mountain’s
molted color of many browns,
with yucca spikes
staking towards heaven.
A candle, she thinks into the bright day
then catches her long stocking,
now dirt stained with new holes,
old with tatters
already darned by her own hand,
where at her ankle the sharp tongue
of a prickly bush caught her leg
like the porcupines from home.

In the night,
wrapped in her grandmother's quilt,
rain had tapped the creosote bush and turned
the air into a strange and wondrous perfume
that woke her and took her
to breathe, deep and perfect breaths
into the soft black night.

In the morning she tossed her head
at the chill and emerged with a change.
She had fallen in love
with the smell of this land
and a sky that is larger,
more open than she has ever seen,
where no trees tread on the magic glimpse
of the horizon and the sun traces its path
from one side of the earth to the other
without biding time in twilight’s hilly sky.

I am a California native too,
a child of this earth full of acorns,
a sweet and keen land
that still lives in spite of asphalt
and the rise of steel.

So I can feel that little girl
I never knew
but imagined in her long skirt,
and her shoes are not so different from mine.

The Poppy

Sturdy   yet fragile
a face of grace
holding on to air that moves
petals like wings
she loves wind’s hands upon her face
but with tenacities fingers
crumbling clods to slowly builds gates
listening she yearns toward the road the river takes
wanting to travel someplace unnamed   like him
to follow the sound he makes    her whim
maybe a mean wind she thinks could take one small part
an orange piece of heart
that could go with the flow
even where cement would ransom beauty
into the arms of the sea
but she turns away instead
to dance naked with the tree
one arm still holding tenacity.

Open me

she calls to sun   guessing the hour

the wind has blown the tresses of the field alive

and on the road to harmony 

she is not the only flower to thrive 

the sound of the river is life sustaining

down down in the middle part of earth

it seeps into the press of dirt around

and fills her with love for river sun and wind

and now     most blessed love of all    the ground 

In the Far Off Someplace Else

In the far off someplace else
you dream with the tongue of a smile
that hides in the corner of your mouth
then wakes me with crushed leaves








Movement is in the air
wearing the changing of time
as the scurry things hide from light
and the last leaf whispers past the window
drunk on the beginning of something








My sweater hangs quietly
in the closet of last winter
still holding the clouds pull
waiting for usefulness to begin







Did you find me in the warmth
where the pillow held the contour
long past my leaving
with your own daylight dreaming?









I wonder where the photo was taken
of your crinkled blue eyes
filled with something that was a gift
where I could see so much time become new







and how can I tell you now
long past that hour of my memory
so ripe and ready to read
the slip of paper wrapped in love
that still holds to the feeling








that I do taste the honey
as it creeps into morning
and longs for the changing
though it still lingers in good night







It travels so fast you see
past a dream and midnight cover
to awaken groggy and stuck
but almost here