Boomerang
Last I flung a boomerang
My prized possessions
Fit in a shoebox
Baseball cards and marbles and jacks
I whipped the boomerang
Watched it fling end over end over end
Revolving blurred fury
Coming to rest by my feet
I lived in a small world;
Fields and woods and lakes,
One winding road neighborhood
Ked sneakers powered a black Schwin
Soon I will return where I began
Back to the promise of spring
To green-green summers
To the tumble of autumn leaves,
To the quiet acceptance of winter
From the farthest reach of the leading edge
Red burning, desert skies
Back to the shadows of spent youth
I dizzy from the spinning years
Round and round and round
Days and weeks and decades
So dizzy I can’t tell
Where beginnings end
When the ending began
All I accumulated, All I discarded
Cast from the tips of the leading and trailing
Flung memories from a shoebox mind
Lid once again open and receptive
To a hand, or a smile, or a heart
Dwight
Crossing the trailer park shirtless
Sweat beads after his rec center workout
Taught, muscular washboard stomach
Creased face a life’s roadmap of wild risk
Grey, hobbit beard boarders weathered grin
A friend from group visits
Dwight shows his watermelon garden bloom
Under the shade of his mobile home,
By the paint faded bicycle,
The listing shipwreck of a car
He is the kind of neighbor
That taps on your slider door
Bearing bacon, egg and cheese sandwich
Checks in when he knows you’re low
Helps tack blown shingles on your roof
“You mother fucker,” Dwight smiles
In response to friends mundane tasks
like “I just came back from the dentist,”
or “I inflated my flat tire”
Rough around the edges
Beautiful at the core
Dwight always parts with,
“I love you, brother.”
Symmetry
A Russian drone darts
Above a Ukrainian fruit vendor
Running wildly around his blue truck
Bald head glints under bright sun
Arms flail, thick body loosing balance
Drone buzz saws air, swaying, stalking
The man leaps under trucks side panel
Out of cameras’ eye, drone screech dives
Explodes like a giant struck match head
California
Outside Noodle Street shop
Bent, homeless woman
Hair like molting pigeon feathers
Drags laden cart of castoff items
Clips a metal sidewalk dining chair
Displaced, it leans against another
Passersby zombie stare
Into cellphones ignorant of imbalance
Until a woman waiting for takeout,
Knee brace on one leg, purple bruise
Just below cutoff jean, on the other
Rights the chair
Not far away
A dipping hummingbird penetrates
An oleander flower stealing nectar
Each wings’ millisecond flap
Mirrors the other
Route 66
Parked at a Williams car wash
Elvis and Marilyn in a ’56 Oldsmobile
The car and couple rough for wear
Elvis road weary behind the wheel
Marilyn’s hair askance
Batteries lost their charge
Tire pressure low
Spider webs string to hubcaps
From weeds between fractured pavement
Faded red Lo-Jack restricts Elvis
No more window down cruising
No where to turn
Windshield clouds with desert dust
Plastered from years of haboobs
One can barely see who they were
Where they’ve been, why they stopped
Parked at a carwash
Do-it-yourself
Decades of coins shoved in metal slots
Like a juke box, smooth river rock orifice
Machines past their prime
Cold hard cash wears sharp edges
Idols gather dust
Black Vatican Smolder
Sunday morning
Her apartment door opens a crack
So the smoke alarm won’t screech
The hallway choked with burnt toast
Her TV blares a preacher’s praise
Ears ring to deaf, eyes sting blind
She is shut tight
Except senior bingo at the center
Deadbolts undone for meals on wheels
And burnt toast Sunday, of course
Smoke billows from her refuge
Like black Vatican smolder
No resolve in sight
Some Times
I am an old man waking
Spreading seed on the backyard wall
Mourning doves fight to peck
They trust me, I stand close
To the dominant bird
Eyes dense as cosmic black holes
Or see my first days of fatherhood
Rocking her at the NBU
Lazy snow out the second story window
I rock adrift an ocean weighted and deep
Full and clouded with ancestral blood
I see myself as I was
A young man after a shower
Wiping steam from the mirror
Searching eyes beyond reflection
Holding a lantern past cavernous sockets
Before shower steam returns
Prophet Margin
Is it worth a pound of flesh
To bite the wafer bone
Drink the watered blood
Spritz holy water on the sinful brow?
Sinners from the womb
Pass the basket, shine the golden throne
Tithing for a heavenly ticket
Confessional returns on tax free guilt
Is it worth the misappropriation?
The flaming crosses on lawns
Torched like candles on birthday cakes
As fevered marchers trample thin icing
Lockstep to a book rarely read
As martyred truth burns in ignorance pyres
Fodder for ash smeared on flaccid foreheads
Greyed as headstones yet to be
Come Spring
Come spring we will know much more
From the depths of winter’s bitter hoar
Where the weighted brittle branch is torn
By ice and gale from a tall oak’s core
Come spring our ears will ache
From changing winds of winter’s break
Nostrils run as blue sky wakes
Crystal air spawned from chilled lakes
Come spring the rains will drum
To wash away the done and gone
Though dark memories flicker on
Our thoughts alight the new found dawn
Come spring our hands entwine
Our grip warms the growing vine
Of wisdom gained from frozen times
To reap the grapes for summer’s wine
Days Gone By
Leaving home
I saw a girl in pastel clothes
On a bike with plastic ribbons flying
A kite tied to her handlebar whipping above
I never could keep a kite in the sky
And have given up riding bikes
My colors now subdued
Ribbons of achievement packed away
Rollercoaster rides gratefully over
My Ferris wheel a revolution round the sun
Cotton candy aches this well-traveled gut
Had my fill of Barkers of hype and false claims
The seasons come soft in acceptance
Ill health and death, familiar frailty
The pain of loss dulled
In a hearth of love and remembrance
Adventures still lie ahead
Seen through tempered eyes
A sweet thrill of survival
The new a wry smile of welcome
Sparks the boy within
On his black Schwin
Baseball cards motoring his spokes
Racing down a shade spackled road
To the country store for Yoohoo and Ring Dings
Crossing Traffic
Phoenix Sunday morning
Business is closed, parishioners in church
Young couple cross not in Sunday best
Not waiting for the walking green
City kids, loose fitting black tank tops
Festooned with metal band logo
Both tattooed and scuffed sneakers
Too young and too poor to drive
Do not look both ways
The street silent except for starlings
That chirp in a deciduous tree
The kids smile bright as bird song
Eyes lock in animated talk
Blind to the future
Most likely going nowhere
Already gone as far as they can
Their backs turned from fate and failure
Reach the other side, clasp hands, peck kiss
In the bright, cool morning
Of nothing can hurt them now
Patagonia Lumber Company
The weathered sign and sun bleached boards stand
An open door, a hasty chalkboard sign reads “bar”
One step in, a glass counter, coolers jammed with local wine, beer
The only food, bags of chips and pretzels
Seating outside on an uneven stone patio
The tables rock, care not to spill
In a corner on a plywood stage
A guy deftly picks his guitar
Can’t quite sing the high notes
People cheer anyway
Dollar tips drop like autumn leaves in a paint bucket
The air is like dessert, big sky chill fills imagination
The wine, surprisingly good
A Panel truck rolls to curbside
First, two kegs are rolled out
Then two grey haired gals come out with a hand truck
Stack eighteen packs of beer
The hand truck hits a stone
The contents spill splitting two cans
The gals stop everything, grab the fizzing cans
Pour the contents into two frosted mugs
Lemons into lemonade? Or by device?
They find an open table
Savor the spoils of lost revenue
The entertainer sings
Til the Rivers All Run Dry
Not a bad cover,
Everything here is close enough to good
Birthday Month
It is near the end
70, a number of surprise
So much has passed
So much yet to do
I learn to let go
My body tells me so
Like a mother says “do your best”
Fuzzy vision
Takes in softer light
Defuses course reality
I choose what to hear
Pretend it is failing
It is.
But more in the desire to listen
Blood vessels congeal
Get stuck, movement plugged
No wonder hearts tire
Beating to escape the prison of ribs
Last morning of my month
We sit outside
Listen as geese migrate home
I spill coffee on my shirt
To match a sunrise egg yolk drip
She laughs at my carelessness
I don’t give a crap
This time is cultivated
An unkempt garden now tended
Fruit to savor