Just August

There's nothing "just" about August

--not in Southern AZ.

Monsoon busts--no more dust.

Desert turns into a sea of green.

Happy hour's afternoon showers.

Bare ocotillo grow waxy leaves.

Canyon walls sprout water falls

Arroyos flow like mountain springs

There's nothing "just"about August

--not in Southern AZ.

Strong Wild Words

My words in sonnets, haiku, or "fences"

Only for you my endearing true love

Worry about voice, rhymes, and tenses

Only for you my prettiest pet dove

Carefully I slip each word on a string

Meaningfully picked and perfectly placed

To split your heart open and hear you sing

Sweet, sultry nothings from bosom unlaced

Light in your eyes dispels all my darkness

From your lips honey slips, drips, and oozes

Coats my sorrow and swallows my starkest

Hardest lumps, and my ugliest bruises

I'll write you a sonnet, a song, or haiku

Strong, wild words, I tame only for you

Spill

There's not enough time for my gut to spill

Yet, through the thick towering dam it flows

Blazing blue eyes pierce my soul reaching still

For deeper feeling than she feels she knows

Keep it from her, I can't, yet, I don't rush

She's a fountain flowing all over me

Dark depths of desire that she needs to gush

I lean into her as long as needs be

Until the universe busts wide open 

And pours out its loving, sweet, pounding rain

A gift from above you always have been 

All that 's within me, you long to drain

Words flooding out of my mind sing to you

From this heart you've loved and know to be true

11/13 So I keep digg'n and win'n

She reached for the bag 

and I snapped at that hag. 

No you don't. 

Get on out of here. 

My whole life it's been clear. 

I don't need you dear. 

You know it too 

and all I do for you. 

Is provide and protect 

but I get little respect 

and neither do you 

so that's how we do.  

Now each day it gets colder 

as we grow older 

and I try and I try 

just to get by 

but you keep 

holding me back 

making me fat

In the roaring

In the roaring

White pounding cascade hurtling down

I feel the life and love of the universe

It flows on me, over me, with me, through me

It is me

Wordsworth's "transparent eyeball" *

Like the bare roots of ancient trees 

That cover the trail like cobble stones

I am integral, I belong

When the bracing water embraces me

I don't shudder. I stroke it gently

Glide out into it's energy

Feel revived, renewed, invigorated

Refreshment I haven't known

Since covid 

Nature is mine and I am hers

She wraps me in her bosom

Of snow-melt run-off

And I am warm again

Not trudging

From a cup of coffee to bed

Day after day

I am alive

As wild, and free 

Timeless and deep

Young, old, and wise

As she

The city beats

I connect with kindred spirits

In the bars, in the streets

In the faces that I meet 

But plunging into this heaven

Swimming out to these rocks

Where she reaches down from above

To massage my back and shoulders

With her strong loving hands

I feel like I am her only child

So much love she bestows on me

Hikers climb down the steep rocks

To see her glorious splendor. They line her banks

They won't brave her icy water

Won't get in her, be with her

And realize 

We are her

Conquer and subdue is their goal

Post an Instagram selfie, get some likes

Go have a beer

I hear her in the spray 

Spattering the rocks

Where I sit 

She's laughing

And I laugh, too.

* From "Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Make No Mistake

The women in my family

Clean baby butts

Work, go to school, cook dinner

And study for final exams while everyone sleeps

Daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers cut from the same mold

They take care of their men

They make them wash the dishes and watch babies

While they eat pomegranate sorbet and watch The Bachelor 

Or something not-football on Netflix

Our strength and our legacy

Make no mistake

The wife I married, the daughters and granddaughters she raised

I stand in awe of every day

Breadcrumbs

These words 

Stream of consciousness soup really

Rarely chosen with care

Falling on thirsty ground

A lost soul trying to find

"the great forgotten language" *

For

"the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth." *

Uh-huh, I see you pointing 

To the "lost lane-end into heaven" *

And the shepherd who led you there

So--I tried to be a sheep--to babble things I didn't know

I found salving comfort in believing I was right

Protected

And loved--no matter what

But "the great forgotten language"

Of the forever lost and alone

Drew me again to a place I never left

Where I knew before I nestled in her womb

The "quiet desperation" **

That haunts us all (according to Thoreau) **

So, yeah--these words

I'll keep putting them down in the lost and found

Because somebody might need to know who I am

I do

These breadcrumbs to the deep dark core of my existence

(Not to find me out but to find me in)

No one has to read them

They're uncomfortable and nearly unconscionable

Yet I can't not write them down

Like Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward Angel

Then You Can't go Home Again

(LOL)

They might not lead to where I want to go

Or anywhere at all 

As T.S. Eliot said:

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time." ***

So, yeah, that's all I want

Makes me feel less lost and alone

So putt'n deez words down Imma gonna keep

(Duh--)

*     From Look Homeward, Angel  by Thomas Wolfe

**   From Walden by Henry David Thoreau

*** From Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot