New poems in "Strawberry Thief," Gallery Press, August 2005

First Faun

Late Winter, the deer come down
for food, hungry for love,
they stalk the traffic on perfect legs,
doe-eyed, nowhere near
appropriately scared.

I slow my Villager on Knight’s Hill,
a buck taps his white cane
off the center divide,
I cannot hear you over all the noise
in both our lives.

You once said to let Nature
take her course, and I know
that water finds its own level,
but this—I grip the steering wheel
with both hands, the buck reaches

high ground, I breathe a sigh,
then a next breath, and a next,
into the absence,
into the rising tide,
and rather than wait

for sadness to cover my eyes
from behind, I drive on
toward the village of the world
where enough food, a warm bed
put me in with the lucky few.

All day the deer play
catch-me-if-you-can on the Miracle Mile,
Spring rain shakes out the trees,
and I can almost touch the veils
that ripple down between our lives.

Coming home, old sun
lays her gold leaf on every stone,
unpins her hair into the wind;
any morning now, the first faun
folded quietly by the road like a stillbirth.

Architrave

This is a story of weight
borne by a load-bearing wall.

The connection is not
of water or air

or even our tightly interwoven
histories of love and fear,

but of stone on stone.
I take your hand,

but in truth I have the measure
of your every bone,

and no load is too great,
for balance has become our home

and I can say without complaint:
bear down on me without doubt

for I hold your hand up to the light.
See how our bones fit together?

How we meet

That first day in the hills above Forest Knolls
we were burnt onto the yellow grass,
our silhouettes two kites in the vast blue
surprise, hearts in an updraft,
white hopes fluttering behind.

Yes, I said, I was married,
dressed in snapdragon innocence.
I dreamed, and that was me
sleepwalking, needing to be
slapped awake.

So, you said, making music
in the labyrinth of my inner ear,
there are innumerable possibilities here,
and on the bay shore of my peninsula
you strung six pearly beaches -
Chicken Ranch, Teacher’s,
Shell, Shallow, Pebble, Heart’s Desire.

When the days grew smoky and shorter
we met in a blue café,
under the audible we conversed.
If this happiness doesn’t last,
you said, expect a deeper goodness.

In a Mexican mountain town
we lay in the still whirlpool of a whitewashed room
the scarf of our siesta working loose,
meet me at Santa Domingo, you said;
down by the church
in the angelic peach and apricot of earliest sunset
I knew of no better waiting.

If ever we meet in a glass house
with stones for hands
or crossed talk
I’d like it heard that I know how it feels
to be charmed, I’d like our love
to let us leave that place unharmed.