Wild Composition

I walk along the beach to 

read pieces from the sea

some scrawled in hurried flourishes

along the tide line, urgent but soon erased

some etched by receding waves

runic wrinkles in the sand

some collaged from feathers,

shells, and the light and graceful bones

of birds who died on a distant shore

above me gulls attempt translation

add their tracks to the margins

I rest my cheek on a towel on sand

and feel her hum, the earth, 

hear no busy bee buzz nor 

restless whine of wasp

just someone who hums while she works

like a broad washer woman with

clothespins in her mouth

she murmurs a wistful unnamed melody

and flicks aside the biting flies before

the thunderstorm.

Earth wheezes against my cheek

and shudders, moving,

but unmoved by the helter skelter

of human sand flea jitterbugging.

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The Widow

She wore his church jacket 

over her yellow flowered dress 

to walk to the shore and scolded 

the kitten that came out to greet her 

‘go back go back’ 

as if she was turning back time

Plunging her hands into the pockets 

her fingers fluttered like nervous

moths in the dark 

she found a receipt from Denny’s, 

the one just off the freeway exit on the way home

   1 Grand Slam

   1 French Toast

   on May 13th, 2007

and she conjured the day, like any other Sunday, 

late morning sun slants across the formica 

and the weary, smiling waitress offers orange juice, 

large or small.

The fog rolls in now, as she stands 

toes buried in cold sand 

her hair scattered with droplets from the damp 

all her yearning persuades the pancake 

smells and bitter coffee smells 

to surge through her.

The gulls overhead swing through the 

mist like vagrant angels.

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The Unknown Artist

Instead of an ear, I cut off my smallest toe, 

and rail against my own limitation

can I translate this inner commotion

into something sublime

shove against the deep foreboding that I

will never have my canvas on

a calendar 119 years after I’m dead, 

not even for that difficult

month, November, though all my 

paintings are of sad heavy 

clouds that suit the mood.

How many have there been

toiling one town over from Vincent or Jackson

deranged by lack of love or fame

seduced by muses one after another

scattering children and furniture

over the countryside in search of

the just-right legacy

that in this case is never found?

My poems will not be studied in school

even though I wrote them while drunk

on life and war and sex

just like Dylan or Dylan

my sonata will not be anyone’s 

processional or dirge

will only join the restless notes

roiling in the void

the paintings by a milkmaid, 

farmer poems, and the heart-braking

compositions of some car mechanic. 

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