Winding where the hot clay walls clasp the highway
I struck a crazy squirrel lunging
across the yellow stripe, its feet burning
on the asphalt. It spun around,
whipped up by the impact of wind, then fell hard.
I could not stop or be shaken.

The road was in bad shape that year.
Highway 30 maintenance crews spent
hot mornings tearing pavement in their bare hands,
burning little fires of melting tar.
I drove past them all, ignoring their yellow helmets.

When night came in Boise, I sat in my great-
uncle’s lawn chair, drink in hand, watching ice melt.
My great-aunt brought out her collection of miniature
camels that grazed, frozen, in camel positions
on the long green lawn. I looked into the cold glass
eyes of a camel, saw the felt transformed to fur,
the spinning body. A hard thump
from the two humps, and my great-uncle
asked after his sister’s heart trouble. 

        (…Seattle, 1966)
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Today we attacked the moon. Our determination
to destroy everything and anything now includes
our gentle moon, that sweet sphere that beams to us
its cool night light. And now we’ve slugged it
with a huge hunk. A rocket. An accident, they tell us,
but in the same breath, “…this offers us a rare chance
to study human-made lunar collisions…”
There will be more?

Did the moon wobble with the slam?
Did the strike send her off balance, as a clumsy soul
on a crowded sidewalk would make me fall?
I feel her hurt, the ouch-ness as the impact came.
A deep, immortal scar.

O placid moon, forgive us! We’ve gone too far
We once gazed at you with kind hearts. Now
we send our crazed fury deep into your crust.
Forgive us? Absolution’s only for the shame-
faced. We have raped you.
We are not contrite. 

          (...August 5, 2026)

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When we were young wives we shocked
them all by making floors and walls
go purple, orange as poppies, deep blue
as Danish sweaters. Those were the signs
of us, those daisies on dark wood round
dining tables.

Now, what is it, better than a decade
later, we’re reduced to orange note paper,
like everybody else, in a world gone
color-mad, throwing off the drab teakettle curtains.
Ovaltine housewives paint their kitchens red
and glory in the glare. We try stark white.
We get nowhere. We divorce our men and go apart
for years. I move to multi-prints, scrambled
textures, as the eye moves. A room like a quilt.

Now you write me a tranquil letter on old orange
note paper. You have remarried. I write back,
Diane, Diane, tell me about the new colors.
Your answer: There are none. Begin again
with orange. 

           (…Berkeley, 1970)

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It’s all about the ball, this skirmish,
that collision, that shirt grab,
that deliberate trip. A player dawdles,
sphere between his fire-pink shoes. It’s
all about the ball. The ball. The ball
that soars across the field then slams
outside the goal whose guardian goalie
deflects it by throwing himself on the too-
green ground. 

Red shirts, white shirts blur to one.
It’s all about the ball; who’s got it cornered,
who’s waiting for a kick, where it flies,
who’s nearby. It’s all about the ball.
They fall, they fall as both teams fail,
score tied. Shadows mark the field, sun
lowers, blindness in the eyes, muscles
raw as cut meat, shoulders torn. Forget
all that. It’s all about the ball, that small
globe elusive to its goals as falling stars. 

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In the juice bar just off Telegraph,
you drank grape ice that clogged
like slow slush in the bottom of your cup.
You pulled with sunken cheeks, and that
smile in your eyes, on the straw to make
holes, tunnel in the ice. And you showed me,
and I proclaimed your virtuosity. “You have
a strong sucking mechanism,” I said.
“I love you,” you said. And no one
in the world knew who we were, or what
we meant, or how we’d carry on. 

Now, in the silence of this distant house
I’m boycotting grapes and grape ice,
remembering the cup of your hands, the fruit
of your hills and valleys, the laugh
of your eyes like the melt of ice. And no one
in the world knows who I am, nor who
I love, nor that the tunnel of my soul
has hollowed out a path to you under the slope
of mountains, slush and ice that form our distance. 

        (Seattle, 1966)

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Forever postage stamps. The cost
is going up. Let’s broaden that. The cost
of forever: more love, energy, money
to ensure some kind of future. Call it
forever—that endless river that runs
and runs, that’s run for thousands
of centuries and, we once said, 
will be there, rippling, rushing
toward the distant sea, always.

Now we’re not so sure. The cost
of fast-moving, clear water, of pure
clouds, of crisp carrots formed under-
ground, of fleet, bouncy, black-tailed
deer that leap, then stare at us
asking a long “why?” The cost
keeps going up. More love needed.
More now-ness spent in calls
for salvation. Forever is closer
to now. 
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All things are infused with being. All
are part of what is. All are conscious.
Mount Shasta said as I sat, back
against her cool slant, “I am alive.”

                          ≈

They made me soft, but not too soft.
Sometimes with down, and sometimes
feathers, foam, and in the old days
stone, blocks of wood. I’m a place
to rest the head. Without me, prisoners
lie on a cement floor and bend an arm
behind the ear and sleep until the arm
sleeps with tingles. I am here to comfort.
To enable rest, to wake the best dreams, 
to give them space to play. 

                            ≈

I’m newly paved, still sticky 
with the residue of yesterday’s tar. 
A trail of ants scuttles a new
path across me, tiny feet tickling,
tentative, but moving fast in fear 
of viscous asphalt as the heat of early 
morning seeps my surface, baking it
in newness. 

		≈≈

I was here before the people
moved in. I’m everywhere in 1980s’
bedrooms, soft, to cushion falls,
to comfort cold, early morning
footfalls. People walk on me.
It’s what I’m all about:
to soften those souls (like me) 
on two legs, who drop their shoes, 
books, crumbs of fresh cake on me.
I am awake.

		≈≈

We are the essence of foundation, 
firmness, support, protection from, 
distance from, separation from the true 
ground. Layers. Remember what’s
beneath us. Talk to us. 

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Six crates of chinchillas wait
on a counter at Air Express
for a flight to Bismarck.
They make sounds like small birds,
chuck up their squirrel tails and chew
on wire with wide eyes.

It’s a privilege to stand close, to watch
their unselfconscious fear. Ignorant
of causes of planes’ screams in the air
they breathe, they turn in sample circles,
raccoon feet ticking on the mesh.
Their future coats erect themselves
hair by hair as a door opens and the wind
strikes, cold. Their small lives begin
and end within these crates. On ship,
train or plane across continents they blink
and eat chow while hurling
through the wild air.

We large animals, too, we wait. 
We make sounds like big birds and turn
in useless circles. Our limp skin 
forms bumps when cold. Our lives
begin and end within ourselves.
Behind our eyes there is a constant
blinking back of tears while we consume
ourselves and the earth hurls through space. 

       (…Seattle, 1968)

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She’s close as air. She breathes when traffic
stops. Silence. Seventeen seconds, not
a sound. Until the light turns green.
Then begin the revs, the groans, the shrieks
of brakes, and now and then sirens’ screams,
the dreams of cops on the chase. Twenty
seconds. Light turns red. Silence.

Ebb and flow. Octavia near Page Street.
San Francisco, late June. Holiday weekend,
weakened by fatigue as the night moves
toward daybreak. Brakes cease, vehicles
are garaged, cops go off for coffee.
It all dies down past midnight. It might
be possible, now, to sleep as Octavia
settles into soft, occasional snores. 

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

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On my premises: a pond,
clear and clean, for now, though it may
at some point need a little flushing. Fish
and bugs thrive there where water lilies 
float. Oh, wait. I see a slip of silt stirred up
just a bit. A worm must have dug around
the bottom. That could be bad. Whole pond
could get toxic. Better drain it. Fast. 
Pond expert comes, sees no problem, pond’s 
fine, but he’s a scientist—can’t trust those guys.
I hire my buddy who’s a sheet metal
expert. He tears out the pond (I pay him
thousands and thousands because I’m
rich, and now he’ll owe me favors.) He fills it 
like an expert. Best contractor ever. Now
my pond is the most beautiful pond 
in the world, but it stinks. Fish dead. 
Black bugs everywhere. No lilies.
Can’t see the bottom (too much thick goo.) 
Someone snuck in and dumped a lot of icky 
something in my pond, then ripped up the scum.
I’ll find out who. I’ll sue. I’ve hired men 
with guns to watch my pond all day, 
all night, shoot trespassers on sight, 
while I text and text and text until
it’s light outside and I can go
to important meetings about my war
and fall asleep.

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We are about to make a cake. If you watch closely
you will see powder from the Swans Down package
empty into a bowl followed by two freshly-cracked,
newborn eggs existing for the first time beyond
their shells. Someday, child, you too can heap tap
water in a cup, pour it, watch it lie puddled
in the center of a bowl of cake mix
without being absorbed.

And now the magnificent current inspires
the mixer to hum a perfect B-flat, persuading
water, eggs and cake mix to unite. Watch, watch
for three minutes exactly, baring the bowl’s clear sides
round and round with a rubber scraper.
Three minutes, glissando to C-sharp, and off.

Now see the thick mixture fall willingly
into floured tins, resigned to a short life of intense
heat, to emerge transformed from wetness
to dryness, from shapelessness to form,
from flatness to height. 

Come to the glass door.
I will turn on the oven light so you may watch. 

	(…Seattle, 1967)

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One wing trailing, an insect staggers,
twirls, circles the rehearsal room floor
while swirls of sound wrap its writhing
body in ancient air. Desperate, wounded,
this carpenter ant will never fly again.

A violinist, during a long rest, pokes
the hanging wing with the tip of her bow
to prod it, probe it, separate it, thinking
it’s caught in a clump of dust (she wears
her music-reading glasses; can’t see

that it’s a wing.) But after counting
nineteen bars, she needs to play again.
Her ant continues its furtive scrambles
on linoleum smooth as glass.
Respighi vibrates up its legs.

A break between movements. The player
checks again, sees now (glasses off)
the glassy, hanging wing. She’s done
more harm than good—that reality
wrenches deep. The ant twists

in pain and moves beneath her chair.
Now Respighi is everywhere, in air, 
transformed through four centuries.
Next movement: Bergamasca. From
the city of Bergamo. Our violinist

was there six decades ago. (She pushed
a baby carriage through its streets,
followed by a clump of curious little
girls.) Now the ant emerges, wing
drags behind. How much longer?

More twirling dances, like a Sufi drunk
on Raki, a dervish dressed in black
through centuries, feet weakening, wing
trailing like a wedding gown. The violinist
plays again. Again, again. She cannot 
look down. 

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This is what it’s like when you rule the world
with half a brain, the other half
half-asleep: a concept floats in, like
a mosquito in your ear. How about
a giant merry-go-round in Central Park,
one thousand fancy horses wrapped in gold?
How about a deeply dense chocolate
cake a hundred feet high, and invite
rock climbers to scale its frosted sides?
Let’s insist the president and senators
wear solid silver crowns and carry
staffs of pure plutonium. Let’s create
a golf course spanning half the state
of Texas, a casino on a spaceship,
a marble colosseum on Mount Rainier.
All with your name engraved in solid
stone imbedded deep with diamonds,
rubies, desiccated eyeballs of your enemies.
It’s 3 a.m. Now text, text, text.
You’re running out of time. 

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For days I have been blowing up a snail.
I blow it up, puffing, for my child, till the red
and yellow cavity is full of breath.
I search again, the last time, surely,
for the leak. I run my hand,
sensitive to the thinnest sigh of air
over the rubber, waiting for a hiss.
And when it comes, wind from a miniature
high pressure area, all the blood
leaks from my heart.

I patch the tiny hole I’ve found
with nail polish, permanent mending
tape, rubber cement. I blow.
The head lifts and takes shape.
Proud, convinced, I set the grand, inflated
snail on a top shelf. But when I’ve forgotten,
and the high, white anxiety is off, 
I hear a sudden, queer crumpling 
as the snail sags, collapses
In a slow stream of my escaped breath.

	(…Seattle, 1967)

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I watch them in the aisles.
They examine each tomato,
feel its freshness, scan its skin,
squint to read ingredients on each
can of cream of mushroom soup.

I see them as they drive to work,
off for lunch with friends, taking
kids to school, heading home, leaving
home. They stop politely at each light. 

I observe the line of cars awaiting
Starbucks coffee, engines idling, 
crawling toward their turn for a paper
mug of brew they might have made
at home. Oh, when will they all wake up?

Or have they already? Do they too
wear the all-engulfing black hood
of fear that disguises me these days?
They keep going. As do I. Why?
What force keeps us breathing?

Might it be hope?
Or love?

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That was terrifying, that plane
or ship or missile that just
screeched over our heads tearing
the clouds apart, practicing
again, again, for war. What else?

I saw a bird flutter, aghast
in fear, an ant tremble in the dirt.
I felt the shuddering of trees,
bewilderment of babies in their cribs,
like me in 1943 when slow aircraft
droned over Portland stealthily.
That’s when I learned to suck my thumb. 

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Decades of busyness. Is it wrong of me now
to want only to sit? To breathe with direction;
in, out, to not assign this task to inner
automation? Is it wrong to ignore laundry
in the tub, nubs of cat hair sunk deep
into carpets, dark chunks of grime
in corners of the kitchen countertop?

I want to counter all those decades spent
swifting from anxious task to anxious task--
to root deep in this sympathetic chair,
watch birds and squirrels struggle, wanting
more, always more, as I want stillness.
Let me be inert, idle, dormant. Let breath
after breath after breath come when I
instruct them or ignore them,
or will them to cease. 

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Only in this day and age
could it have happened. One poet
telephoned another, late at night,
across three states, “Quick!
What’s a one-syllable water bird?”

The second poet searched briefly.
“Grebe,” he said. He might have offered
tern or gull instead, but now the line reads,
“In the reeds, the search for food by grebes
is brief.”

	(…Seattle, 1966)

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Ancient woman peers out from her cave
and sees a miracle: water flows down
from the sky’s dark. It soaks the ground,
seeps through to a creek. She sees it
join a river, follows it as it rushes
to the vast ocean she cannot see across.

She marvels at the devotion, the attention
the determination of this rush of liquid.
She palms a scoop of fresh rain, drinks,
feels its process through her, squats,
excretes, smiling. Her contribution
to the flow. 

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Where did the you that’s you go, you
tiny coil of orange on the roadside?
You slithered, but not fast enough,
across the quiet road where fate sent
that large, moving thing that rolled
and rumbled over you. Squashed
you flat.

So now what? That crushed coil,
orange as an inmate’s shirt, isn’t you.
I know you’re somewhere, though,
squirming into some small space,
some new entity, more surprises,
maybe green now, or purple.
Next time. 

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