Blessing

Child, I am writing to apologize,

though you cannot yet read,

for every moment I have been rough with you.

Seventeen years your senior,

I know too well the moments that

life will be rough with you. Without apology.

Child, I am writing to apologize,

though you may never remember,

for every time I have been impatient with you.

For the preschool rush, the hastiness

on with the shoes and out the door

for snatching you up and snapping you

into your booster seat, your little feet

swung from their spot before you could

examine the cicada in the driveway that scared you.

No doubt the largest insect you had ever seen,

it glistened holographic on the asphalt in the near-noon sun.

When I hurried you into the car and drove away,

dismissing your curiosity with a sharp lie:

"its just a big bug"

I failed to explain that fantastic root dweller

who emerges only once every seventeen years

to molt its skin and begin its adult life.

May you always have time and forgiveness.

May you be surrounded by people more willing

and worthy than me, to explain the trivial and fantastic-

ready to revel with you in the smallest wonders. 

May you blossom, emerging from this home

brilliant and beautiful to rise high above this asphalt,

and may you not wait 17 years to see another cicada.

The prairie underscores the bright blue

of the 10 a.m. sky and a train slices

the whole scene diagonally:

running beside the long straight

black of route 66

carrying the cogs to some massive

machine that makes another part

of the world run

but not this part

if every train stopped and every

telephone pole fell and all the

wires tangled in sparks on the

ground, nothing would change here.

These red rocks

thick clay

scrub bushes

lean hawks

don't mind.

Laws of Nature

Two men hang glide near the dam

they swing on the wind

blown dandelion seeds

then drop

all red and yellow parachutes

and crumple on the ground.

Two girls drive through the desert

top down

all Joshua trees and sand

heads turning all directions

the dead parts dropping off.

The west canyon rises high

and hard into the clouds--

the only objects casting fat shadows

in the noon sun.

The dam restrains the gushes,

human laws for wild things.

Notes from the desert

Since I haven't written in so long, I thought I'd post a little preview of what I am working on. Some Notes from my cross country road trip. Love from Albuquerque.

8/16

Driving the long straight stretch towards Barstow
heading the same way Hunter did
in a smaller convertible, decades later
wondering what my reaction will be to the city of sin
and whether or not the great American dream has changed.

Smog so thick it swallows the tops of the mountains
and taller billboards in the the distance
follows us up 15 N and hasn't burned off by 10:30.

Hit Hesperia and see a few wind turbines,
sad attempts to prevent the destruction
of the atmosphere, but considering the fog,
seems like too little too late.

Alison takes us on a mad, GPS guided search
for a Starbucks, which dot the landscape like cacti,
and we fly through the drive-thru with two
ventiskinnyicedcaramellattes with extra shots,
almost faster than Alison, with severe ADD and
years of practice, can order them.

"we'll be in Barstow in an hour."

Costco, Walmart, In'n'out, and Del Taco
line the route out, begging drivers to stock up
before they hit the strange stretch of barren desert
the last un-commercialized space in the nation --
coming from Disneyland, where a platoon of
cartoon characters has made a police state of Anaheim,
the desert is a welcome sight for me.

We pass a 2009 revisit of the Camaro
and discuss the streamlined recreations
of Mustangs and Chevelles. Alison likes them.
I think that good things always come back,
sleeker, updated-- never quite as good as before.

Perspective

My sunglasses,

the big ones

I always have on

the ones he said

he hated once

because they hid

my eyes

another said

they were retro

or something

like that

and you, well

you bought them for me, but

I've been wearing them

so long I'm not sure

you notice them anymore...

they have a pinkish

yellow tint, that

makes everything

more beautiful.

Intensify the

effects of transient

light on stable earth

the greens of plant

the blue on white of sky

They make those contrasts

more deliberate, and

gentler too, somehow.

On this deck, now

admiring the backyard

I realize I am not

wearing them, for once

and that the technicolor

I see is all 9 a.m. sunlight.