only if you're counting

A dark blue gray skeleton fish on a grey pink sky at sunset
could be a musky, could be a pike piercing the horizon,

now a small drift into and also away from the possible.

I have seen narwhals approaching from the south
in this most mild of winters

and I was not afraid of the darkness.

To light the bayberry candle and wait for the dusk
is not only sensible,

it is the only possible response.

it hovers under there, in a blanket of mist

Your genome misting smeared on a thickened goblet must of red
is near to mean that revelations are yet possible but partly sealed,

mostly apart from the little drib of saliva glisten left again revealed
when, certainly, all you wanted was that perfect quench of dread

to pitch away into the heavenly green of candle flames gem tossed
under a waving horizon of jagged black teeth lost on broke slopes,

searching for a purple chord that can reign in harmonious tropes
so not yet again a formal sonata with fiery canon is barkly mossed

with velvet greenery grown upon the antler budding sophomores,
who, from the gaunt wolf that howls up from the needles a granite

slab where worship is expected, groan silver dew to black night
in the foggy mystery that wisps and purrs in pineapple spheres.

when the sun arcs low at dawn

cherry red scales of coloratura scent drift lightly
white across gleaming uplifted patinas of sound

and rhythm cannot exit so quickly across deer
skin stretched taut against pale December skies

of cirrus and crystal ice that brush near heaven
with vertebrae scales frozen stiff sky high in azure

canvases chiaroscuro field and ground blanched
to spin a colorless globe with blue focus glowing

on iconic foothills whose spiny bones revel under
the leafless supplication of grey trees that reach

for a god that is half-moon hidden behind fictions
that arise from bored parchment dried to reaching

so far too far when the sun arcs low at dawn

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.