The Cirrus Sky

I don’t mean
To belabor
This mountain

But I always
Come to it

It must have been
A day like this
With parents
And children
Standing there
When the thinness
Of the air
Came in
And the unobstructed
Distance
Pulled

Feeling this
And its casual
Well-being
I happened to look
Up
And saw it

Over the parched
Horizon
Of brush and oak
And dry pasture

The wind
Spreading
Clouds
Of ice




--Avocet, 2001

Upper Well

Farther
through the abandonment
of olives and gray
splintered boards
sun weathered
lichened

brush that has apples
mulberries
vetch covered road

through bay thicket
black mud again
gray leaves
beneath light gray trunks

A well
covered with a shed
corrugated steel
dark
Redwood plank wet
with blue-gray mud
under water
mineral hard

It tastes gray
like rocks
like frailty




--Avocet, 2006