when I dreamt of a faraway place

Cold little winds started to flirt
from the northwest white again
with buffets of black chill to come.

Headlights flicker haphazard
on the sheet metal bevels
of nearby roof ducts erect,
orange flickers of deceitful heat-

one small net to ensnare errant drives
ensnares instead the purple clouds.

Wouldn't it be nice?

Fleet of footing, the bristled beard is decoy driving
around and round an upward spiral of macadam-
switchbacks walled by hand placed rock fences
with those little jagged points discouraging rears
from resting though it was a not a hike but more:

I expected an observatory but here was sure escape
led by genius whose pale ivory parchment was insured
and so inscrutable that we found a pearly seaside where
the quiet craic was good despite a sloped sea wall scare
and a growling gray horizon filled granite pale with skelligs.

At the end of the road a tessellated turret merely yawns
and you ask to photograph the orange ferns and lilies-
I just wanted to say "Wouldn't it be nice?"

a season long in turning

The rock portal to the trail head was closed
but Mount Shasta welcomed our grace with
piney arms that were in pine swiftly opposed
with grainy scree and an orange needled pith,

woody cones fell plenty in a season austere
where snowfall tumbled into secret ravines
and opened a deep freeze in cracks where
bursts of young pines yearned to be green.

A season long in turning matters to spring
but shortens out as one returns in default,
to stare left at whiteness and wonder if salt
will hasten the melt despite the obvious rings

when a beaver Moon has Saturn eclipsed
and one looks backward with quivering lips.

Early to the Barrow Laid

Early to the chamber laid in a bloom barren bower where
the chairs are shrouded in synthetic white because bare
the long chrome legs would near and laughingly compare
to those naughty thighs pressed blackly lush in nylon sheer

the two crones chatter in cotton candy conspiracy sprays
and salivate about where the open House of Debbie lays
for all the ladies that come to see a purple weave betrayed
by felonious saliva that washes their scalps in bald hearsay.

So early to the barrow laid, unable to grasp arcing tropics south
and topics in northern ears that cannot avoid their carping mouths
even while sitting alone and still while bellied wine erases doubts,
a mind blurs behind my tortoise shells and no breath will out.