The Possibility Witch

This convexed love a rearview mirror

fixed on negative space

stars turned inside out

subjects closer than they are

fish heads on the half shell

blind luck in the southcoast sun

roller coaster skeleton

a carnival of old thrills

funhouse a vacant lot

where the midway was

mission viejo doves and swallows

last stop before the border

a soft lens on the pupil's black hole

a no services rest stop

quantum entanglement

right around the next bend

*

After sunrise mantra on Second Mesa

and finding Joe, my faithful Russian Blue

fellow traveler at his own ritual —

four baby cottontails laid out

iin parallel pointing from him to the sun —

drove south on 87 until I Sw

a dirt road heading off into a cornfield.

Leaving Joe iin the pickup, I followed the road

until it ended where an old Indian woman

stood waiting for me by a weathered cabin.

You want corn? in a matter of fact voice,

a statement as much as question. I nodded yes.

She went behind the cabin and came back

with three ears — red, white, yellow.

I gestured with open palms and puzzled look.

She handed me the corn, went behind the cabin

and this time came back with the blue one.

I accepted it with a thank you and bow,

walked back to the pickup and headed south.

*

Eyes blue gray green as ocean waves

catching the sun, hands quiet as silhouettes

razor-thin-wings above the palms in dawn pastels

teasing what was there to be said without words

*

Yet Further

north of language

schools and Bolinas

a busload of heads

profiles

in tinted windows

odd hours

cuckoo clock

times of departure

gift of gab

behind the wheel

navigating

no hopalong

or butch but blarney

in a cowboy hat

picturesque

place names

picaresque lives

washed up

between between

and nowhere

pulled over

for of all things

going too slow

in the beginning

desire not instinct

but drive she said

*

Beef-to-heel to Connemara curls

cloverleafs all over the map

whistling swans and Uileann pipes

air translucent wavering

where all roads lead to amor inanis

calling on those in the land of the dead

*

Mountaintop islands in a sea of cloud

vermillion memories of the sun

the air all but palpable

your voice the breath I breathe

*

Next stop

Here Now

On or Off

*

Offwhite stucco ceiling writhing

Celtic puzzles and Chinese knots

philodendra fractaling

across a bonewhite wall

You someone else entirely

yet someone I'd known

as in the mirror I wasn't.

Bach made it all reasonable

*

As things begin to define themselves

out of the animal darkness you

as usual disappear leaving only

the sense of you here and the phoebe

outside rehearsing his plaintive refrain

*

You came in wearing a mask

the color of invisible

Where your eyes should have been

all I saw was the open door behind you

When your voice without a mouth

said Am I too late?

I answered Are you out of your mind?

then asked myself the same question

*

Past tense past perfect to be exact you

all but vanished at the gamebird refuge

in a yellow-headed icterid murmuration

which surrounded you with a tumult of wings

*

High on a windmill crow's nest

surrounded by possibilities

in an angle iron skeleton

blades overhead mincing the moonlight

the wellpipe at the center between us

the air cooled down by propriety

*

No, no, I take it all back,

that couldn't have been you with the bronze sickle

prowling the Navarro redwoods

or light as a feather in the Berkeley Hills

Tenderloin Mission Dolores

Land's End group grope

eyes aflame when that restaurant

in Big Sur refused serve

you and your ragtag family

or skirting miles of sheer death-wish

at the edge of the old haul road

high above the lost coast

smooth as a sylph between crossbow

William Tells on electric wine

and boys with beercans on their heads

or gamboling with lambs on the Scotia headlands

sapphire eyes too ancient to bear

looking into for fear of drowning

dancing solo in a beachtown bar

pretending to see only one eye

pinned on your every move

or grocerycart bag lady

ensorcelling Kwikstop gas pumps

with blue streak logorrhea

hand in hand walking the dunes

dark night winter squall

tracks dissolving in wet sand

or under the space needle umbrella

more than enough show and tell

masochism to go around

and north of all that a gravel beach

below the old-growth, July,

sky severe clear, the pulsing

cobble and wave call and response,

pterodactylan pelicans

single file skimming the surface

the shush of pebbles in the backwash

the icepack babble in rocky beds

your voice speaking in tongues

*

In your more sentimental moods

you liked to visit that old graveyard

too high on the bluff to hear

waves slapping the rocks below,

gravestones too weathered to read and one

with a hole through the granite and on either side

windowglass circles so you can see her heart

once loved and loving now shriveled and black

*

The best ever you said was on his Harley,

head down behind the windshield, the hog's

signature suck-squeeze-bang-and-blow

between your thighs the two of you

leaning into the hairpin curves coming

down the long grade from the high country

*

It won't be long now said the graying woman,

dust mop in one hand

the other under the bedclothes

her feet, poor thing, are already cold

and that's where it begins

*

Contact lens in too long:

eyeballs bloodshot

white matter in the tear ducts

— as long as it's not green pus said the eye-doc

but give it a rest, don't set your beams

too high, quit trying to tell what you see

with only one eye on the road

from what you're looking at or for

*

I-10 Shamrock Texas

bitter cold blizzard night

hiking back east to try to make peace

between my mother and grandmother

while there was still time.

A white El Dorado pulled up

under the truckstop arc lamps.

When I opened the door you motioned me

to put my pack in the back seat

and sit up front in the heater's warmth.

In the blue glow of the dash and headlights

reflected back in off the snow,

the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen:

high cheekbones, long hair, turquoise,

your very presence a radiance.

Hours and very few words later

under a truckstop arc lamp

outside OK City

with a smile you wished me luck.

I watched your lights disappear in the snow

*

Midnight the middle of nowhere

high desert backcountry blacktop

still wet from late afternoon showers,

down the road ahead a myriad

of red lights dancing in the darkness

(For sure nothing human you said)

that when we stopped turned out to be

thousands of newborn spiders clinging

to wisps of gossamer shroud lines

suspended from the darkness above,

their spectral red lunatic eyes

refracted by our headlights,

drifting west in the humid air

*

Betwixt the two Quakers say

is where love is

Between yin and yang is ch'i

says the I Ching

*

And there were deer in the old orchard

does and fawns and they came to you

and you gave them windfall apples,

stroked their foreheads with your fingertips

and they nuzzled your palm then we

walked back to the car without a word

*

Oedipus you may have noticed

has precious little to do with this

despite your proclivities

my sibling fantasies

the Sphinx even less, though

riddle-me-this love poems

with a vengeance do pose questions that forever

plague family romance

*

A milk-blue moon so thin

the sky behind it bled through

*

Speaking of love

tongue in cheek

a permanent wink

Walked away

from another one

said the brakeman