Medicine Lake

1)
Laying my head
On air
Inside the netting
Raised
With shock-cording
In a caldera’s cradle

An antlered calm
Walks
On the edge
Of disturbance
To water

A brief shower
Shaking down
Through the red bark
Of California’s fir
Releasing
Temporarily
The unsorted
Stress

2)
Transferring
By volcanic association
Into the meadow
The impression
Of molten hair

A woman
With lava
On her head

3)
Walking
Over the stone-flows
With my son
To a pond
In a timber-lined chamber
Catching frogs
Among dragonfly multitudes




--Avocet, 2004

Tuesday Night


I am floating

resting past the lighted hills

glancing in moments
of tranquility at the moon spread out
spacious across the bay

and I cast my lime-lights
down at my mother her surface
shifting mineral and metal

and we meet
bolt for bolt
glowing behind the curtain of my falling body


I have silver now

to match her flesh of water
and thunder to match her quaking

dissipating in the wind above her

rain taken by the Sierra my
uplift filled by the sinking

air of the ridge



--Avocet, 2006