Behind the stone wall,
They dreamed in the luxuries
Of dried grass.
Here, the miseries were far away.
Woven into the symmetries of thistle,
Shaded by specks of leaves
Restless on the afternoon,
Now suddenly still,
While the sweetness reaches
Almost too far now,
And the last cheating light
Leads them home once again.
Every year, an old friend visits,
Knocking on the morning door,
Before the chickens go out.
Just for a day,
Maybe two.
.
The old rivers of light and heat,
Much alive, cry
In their thirst for night,
With the promises of fading evenings liquored
In the scent of blackberries and stale grass
Hiding in the hot afternoon.
.
This crooked summer:
Like wilting vines on a broken arbor,
Motionless, as they cling fast
To the memories of serpentine edens.
.
That’s when my head turned:
Nothing to silence a breath
Or darkness to stifle horizons.
.
That’s how This summer came.
No Swainson’s spirals,
Just weird birds
Calling from afar,
After some punk rain set it all back
for a few weeks.
And gave me a do over.
.
This: after the clothesline came out
And the sureties of old, stale days
reappeared on the agenda,
For another try.
Our darlings of winter,
Tell us once more,
This passing of water,
That hungry denial of patience,
You so much waited for.
.
Your stories to fill a coming empty:
One last time.
Oh, please.
.
Our darlings of winter,
Give us this one day.
.
How many times,
Have we seen this moon set,
Sharp crescent,
Sliver of time,
Counting years,
To cast once more,
A warm May evening?
.
Our darlings of hope,
Freedom, maybe,
From bondage of self and season.
.
Please.
Call early, to the stillness.
Follow all the shadows soon missed
Only to consume us.
.
Colored in leaf,
Painted in agony,
Watered in respite.
.
If I could escape time,
I’d choose not,
Rather to wallow
In sores
And dirt,
Gone dry and waiting.
Forget holding these days,
Slipping into winter’s cache.
Forget staring into evening’s countdowns
No sense is made in counting light
Where time is the futile game of the insane.
The daily bread,
Given on this day,
Cast in poppies
And blooming blackberry corners,
Everything sprawled and covered.
.
Just over the hill,
Nights feed on themselves:
Fickle contests of fading light.
Here, the din of thrush,
Trickles of water,
And a last, hushing turn of leaves
On a vanishing breeze,
Where doors open to the old memories
Of dusty roads, watermelon mornings and
The easiness riding along.
.
One last whisper of rain,
Faint, barely promised,
Never seen.
That’s it.
The faithful tenancy of days has arrived.
There, at the far end of the long, ramshackle yard,
Where grandpa’s garden starts,
And the apricot tree:
Pilfered Mockingbird delights,
For us, the watch from a circle of chairs
Some Sunday afternoon.
.
But that was before the rain,
And the wind, and shuttered windows,
Only to peek, to scratch its belly,
We knew when to stay in
And dash out,
Before the water came
Or in between.
.
Then we were graced with the long showery spring,
Great stories I was since told, in thunder and sun,
While I huddled in fear of night and flashing sounds,
In the time of peas,
And chicken manured spring gardens.
.
The San Joaquin would run high that spring
Into the summer
When the first zucchini bloomed,
And we rinsed the last of the mud from our socks.
Like it always was,
Back there, where the water still was.
The afternoon holds just enough
Life and dying,
To be familiar
In the narrow, empty spaces
That keep to themselves
In a confusing mass of briars,
And dried or mildewed berries:
Take your pick.
While the shadowed visitors of place
Return home.
.
The day’s path gives a ride
Good sojourns,
Moving, really moving along.
And this time:
Like the knob of some old radio,
Cranked slowly one way,
Boisterous and fading
Again and again.
.
Nobody talks about this stuff,
Making for poor politics.
None, really.
Unless we can all turn askew,
Upwards. All of us.
.
‘Cause we all see it our own crooked ways.
.
And one more:
Don’t fall for the witching hour,
Telling you, this moment:
Some speck of time,
that could turn the day.
No. Don’t.
Just watch this time,
like it was back then.
The graveyards of climate:
Like fishing,
where a scant few days are easy.
.
But mostly,
August’s forced languor
to some other eden,
Far from this nihlitude of sapped topographies,
Calls us down.
Now: the dusty dry interludes of impossible
Hell hole hermitages of heat.
Oh, Hell yeah!
.
And those cruel, cheating soft years.
.
Neah, the feint tries of Autumn:
Failed shadows of yesterday’s
Arguments over long drives
Through once watery green valleys
Where tiny creeks had life:
In those old memories we write about now,
And dream of,
Before the tiny earthquakes stir us,
From the empty, dark hour before dawn.
.
All this:
Left behind now.
.
If I could wish on a genie,
Just for this time:
Give me the geologies of water,
Grandma’s fountain,
once again.
Shaken Rain 