harvest

Autumn Pi

Rain on desert ears has the
Nostalgic ring of ancient
Canyons, striae revealed

In layers of eras, reality
Visible over eons where
Water knew its way.

Maybe we’ll wake
Tomorrow, the hot sun
Returned to its high autumn

Zenith, symptom of the
Sickness humans have
Inflicted on everything

Natural around them–
Trees, air, water, animals
Earth’s great oceans all

Poisoned with plastic,
Suffocated, hexed in
Chemicals, save us

From ourselves, our
Hubris and our short-
Sighted nature

Perhaps it is only the
Infinite that keeps me
Sane these days, makes

Me whole, returns me
To my place between
Stars and atomic particles

Sun-burnished sandstone and
Outer space, reminding me
With all our furious machinations

Good and ill, humans have never
Found a round number for Pi,
The circumference of the universe

“My Business is Circumference” Emily Dickinson

Season changing clouds, October 2025. Image, my own.

Plastic

Driving into the ever-early sunset,
East, city streets, wet from rain

moments ago, just passed,
In the waning light

Street lamps begin to wink on
A turkey vulture rides a thermal

High above the traffic light, black,
Feathery, flighty, I’m surprised

To see such a bird here,
Metropoli, humanity, all scrummed

Together in ever-growing towers
Towns, I look away from the bird

To the arrowed light, dictating a
Turn, the bird takes another

Breeze, it’s moving on to
Other climes, no, there is

No bird. The black specter,
An airborne plastic bag

Autumn in the Wasatch Mountains, 2025. Image, my own.

Paper

A fearless paper
Advocate, let decay the very
Lines I hold so dear

Beethoven Era

Can you imagine?
Deafness where once was joyous
Sound
Blindness where once filtrations of color-filled light
Ricocheted
Can you imagine?
Losing everything?
If you are human, the guess is, yes
But why must pain catalyze all our understanding? Is it
Truly our only teacher? Isn’t the promise of
Death
Enough to cause us to cling to love, to
Life, to now, maybe not. So maybe we go deaf, blind,
Senseless
Into that good night, into the dark, waiting for
The dawn with breath so small we barely live, sore
Respiration
Reaction, all part of this existence when what we
Thought we wanted most is gone, dematerialized where
Reality is echoed and
Chambered
Oh heart, please, live, please drink the night and day as
A cup of bitter sweetness, lasting but a blink
A piano hammer in the abyss, hammer to string, string
bing, bing, ba-bing, go, boogie,
Be

Gold Nike Shoes. Oakland Museum of California. Image, my own.

Andante

It will never do to keep running
Into yourself if you can’t look up,
Ponder the path of the stars in
The night sky, gaze with longing
And new eyes, on the moon with
Rapture, take in the horizon each
Day and walk into a new lifetime

Honey

Honey, laughter and green curry are all the #soulfood
I need the joy of bright kaffir lime leaves charged into garlic
and simmered over vegetables, a meal to carry us
through the ages, a gale of fascist hail and bull shit, the
storm of the century is upon us, and all we can do is cook,
sing, and watch the moon as it rises high in the night,
silent observer of her earthly neighbors what a perplexity
what a tragedy, only for a moment, all mixed with joy and
delight, how will we last, how will we survive the fight
join it, gear up, only history knows on this very first calm
snowy night. We hunker in, we knit, we resist like life
depends on it because it does, resistance can be small
nearly silent until the way is clear and that same moon
swims overhead as the path is lit in the quiet dark

Orb

In reality
In the body
Black and gray
White and blue
softest aura
Hazing purple
Bold broad
Moon the
Clouds opaled
All around
Stars and sky
Dappled through
and Through
Lord, Bless
Gratitude for
Ohs and glitters
Heavens and Earth
The glory of it
All that lone
Full Moon