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At night, my headaches,
and I still don't know
good living
from social routine.
But I do know now
the way the sun lays across the grape fields
and the way the bubbles are small
when the stuff is good.
And where to sleep in
and when to wake early.
And how risotto and gnocchi
should feel in my teeth.
And if I'm good,
and quiet,
I can hear the good living
breathing in you
and smell the sweet life
in us going on with the day.

Closing Down the Market

I want to wear the wares of people

who made them with their hands
Give the paper money I earn a shape,

a new color, a reason

made meaningful by an exchange of

hand to soiled hand. 

When the market closes, the tents

at half mast, metal poles

collapsed for packing, old suitcases,

colored bins of plastic, copper

earrings, bruised sweet apples, folded

tapestries with rough

patterns asleep, prints finger-browsed

sorted and left behind in a

Sunday hunger satisfied only

when your design is her desire.

For him to survive it must be

paid for, not merely

admired.

Nightlights

The lights inside houses at night

Are all listening, no sounds

But the nods of passing shadows and

Small sorrows,

Your broken loneliness beneath the lights,

The pale rising of a new day and a soon

Forgotten fog.

I know love and it knows me by

The distance that separates

Wanderer from homemaker, doorknob

From trodden pavement.

Economy of scale

Social marooning, USA,
without ships or transport
an unwalkable distance between
an unhealthy infrastructure,
but expanding. Economy
demands expansion.
Breathlessly growing. So tired.
To survive the day you need water
food, sleep, accessibility.
Walking shoes once but no more.
Once supporting muscle and lifting,
strain and exertion,
the human day to day.
Now specialty cross-training, aerobic activity
outside the day to day.
Marooned by the vastness of this vastest of places.
Contiguous but deserted sprawl.
Infertile and swollen, greasy and oiled,
who can inhabit or survive can sit still.

What is this lonely place you see
no refuge here
no legacy
no arc of blood
no continuity
but a special kind of violence
a creeping dizziness
released by razors
propelled by a pressure
that builds beneath your harbor
while you relish your calm
knowledge stacked to the rafters
you will find no quarter here
it lay in the shadows
it lay in the depths
always there,
patient,
solemn,
unrelenting.

14,696 +/-

Mockers in the cedar brake,
Ruby-Throats in the bonnets and brush.
Pseudacris crucifer audible over the whine
of a neighbor-kid's dirtbike.
All in the ember-glow of dusk.
The brakes take to shadow,
ambitious jutting in the days' remains.
I walk inside to grab a calculator,
to tally the setting suns-
Fourteen thousand six hundred
plus ninety-six spins of the globe,
give or take.
I walk back outside, and she asks
"What are you doing with that calculator?"
"Writing a poem," I say.
It is mostly dark, and I can't distinguish
bluebonnets from paintbrushes
or see the nubile shoots
of brushy bluestem and clover.
A Cardinal makes a last-ditch call-
Tew! Tew! Tew! Birdy-birdy-birdy-birdy?

Right Place, Right Time

During last Friday's beery midnight drive
up the winding escarpment road,
I heard a song by Ray Wylie Hubbard
that said something to the effect of

"Don't let your expectations
get bigger than your gratitude."

and as I drove through Bee Cave,
my eyes began combing
the plazas, malls and storefronts
for a tattoo shop.

Had one existed, I would be sitting here
in my office, on a Monday,
with a smarting palm.