Horses graze, m…

Horses graze, moon-rise 

Red rock buttes cast golden glow 

Silence, stillness, peace 

 haik

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Red silt water …

Red silt water flows 
Gray rocks smoothed by rivers churn 
Birds and water sing
 

Too Many Holes

Take every feeling that fights

its way in, capture it, lock it up

inside a wooden box with a skeleton

key.  Everything I feel is my enemy.

 

The soldiers of sadness of fear of regret,

they fire their weapons of emotion if

they get too close, leaving me with holes

clear through.  Every shot means

one more piece of me on the ground.

 

I have no weapon, so I arrest them as soon

as they appear.  There’s a tiny prison box

for each, so sadness never speaks to hope,

and guilt will never hear from pride.

 

Boxes line my walls, reverberating

cries, but I stand guard, in case more feeling

come by, for I already have too many

holes and too many skeleton keys. 

Monument Valley

Red rock buttes rise from the parched landscape, dotted with desert 

junipers and naked bushes.  Stacks of small red stones echo 

walls that rise in crimson suddenness between arid, windy flats. 

This is Navajo land, with no fences.  These massive rocks that rise 

like statues carved by wind and light, belong to them, and seem to bear 

a message, a code that speaks to them.  I hear it in the chant of our 

Navajo driver who names each rock formation.  The light balances; 

there is no randomness in the soft landscape and massive 

red rocks.  The Navajo understand. 

 

The Old Barn and the Open Door

The old barn tell is telling stories that might not

be true.   Its roof is sagging, shingles

dangling, half bare really.  Overgrown

pine branches have settled on it

like tired arms, dropping pine cones

to roll into random piles in the golden

grasses below.  A red barn once, it now

shows faded, ruddy patches between wooden

boards, worn free of paint, soaked in

hues of mossy green and gentle brown and beige.

The old barn watches with window eyes that tilt

different ways, the kind that watch, that have

seen seasons of sadness and years of abundance,

eyes that don’t close.  The mouth is that door,

scratched and worn, knob broken off years

before.  It never quite closes, and always seems

to whisper as you pass.  The old barn is telling

stories again, with the door that won’t shut.

Opening Up

Doors slammed, quiet phones, turning away,

Silence

Barren trees, frozen highways, empty benches

Woodsy paths of stones

The same songs on the radio

Dreams of flying

Clouds shaped like angels

The smell of rain

Every sunset a Van Gogh

I’m listening