Poetry

The mind 
likes the squeeze 
of chutes and channels.

Things of my world, thwart, solid, chockablock,
That I was wont lightly to wield and dandle,
Now, button-bungler, fool of lid, latch, lock,

sic on it, the cameras: witch-green greasepaint canopy—
pan down: the thick bamboo lattice
twine-bound—pan down: dirt with rags to gag up,

Nobody knows what anything
means anymore.
Sea-turtles run inland
at birth.

In every sale a list of ways your home 
could be destroyed: flood, poison, earthquake, fire. 

This early, the small birds’ trudging notes;
Six storeys high, a crane looms
As in graceful blessing…

Meet me at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach,
That shabby, squat nightclub on its foggy pier.
Let’s aim for the summer of ’71,
When all of our friends were young and immortal.

Heavy blue veins streak across my mother’s legs,
Some of them bunched up into dark lumps at her ankles.

What was the heart of her story,
tired, on their bicycles, night

coming on while they tried to reach
Lago di Balseno, the farmer,

They left their dog and a record playing,
the boy and girl next door. Last night

they argued to music, like they do;