TWO FOR BREAKFAST AT THE CHATEAU LAKE LOUISE
The sun strikes early on Mount Victoria
waking diamonds in the old monarch’s crown
washing softly down her ermine covered shoulders
While surrounding peaks
in playful disrespect
throw hand puppets of bears and wolves
across her lower skirts
*************
Lake Louise
windy morning
shadows of clouds
avalanche down the glacier
FIRE RELIEF CONCERT IN AUSTIN
“Roll me up and smoke me when I die”
– Willie Nelson
It’s damn dry in Texas this year Y’all
It was summer in spring and it’s still summer in fall
The big old lakes are all piss-puddle small
and the cows are eatin’ Bar-B-Q grass
the ones that are eatin’ at all
A million trees and a thousand homes
burned up in Bastrop just like dry sticks
But the stars are gathering over in Austin
Willie and George and the Dixie Chicks
Neighbors who know and care how they feel
Lovett and friends and Asleep at the Wheel
So let’s all chip in and do what we do
I’ll write a poem, what about you?
THE NOT QUITE DEAD SEA
Thirteen hundred and thirty eight feet
below sea level
Unless you live around there
and then all of the other seas
are a long way in the air
Driving through the West Bank
watch the signs as you drop away
After the first six feet you are living with the dead
Down, down, down, you go
foot by foot and year by year
heading for Herod’s health spa
King David’s refuge, and source of balms
used in the mummification of young King Tut
Eight and a half times saltier that the ocean
You float in the water so thick that you can’t sink
and air so thick the sun won’t burn you
as you look up and East into the hills
where the scrolls were buried
You don’t have to read them, you can feel them
MAY 1ST MAYDAY
On my 4th birthday
I am pushed off the front page
by the announcement that Hitler is dead
A mere sixty six years later
they do it again for Bin Laden
Enough already
with all of this mass murdering
and pissing on my candles
PLAYING OLD 78s AT THE NURSING HOME
Aunt Myrtle
skips a groove from time to time
The needle, still diamond sharp
plays 1952 for a round or two
Then the niceness of the people here
grandpa’s bad temper, and the size
of the long kitchen at the farm
The sweetness of her husband
sometimes here and sometimes gone
and where is he now?
Reminded that he died some years ago
with quick humor still intact, replies
That would explain why he never comes to visit
NEIGHBORLY
On gravel roads
there are three tracks not four
Nobody gets to pass anybody
without noticing that they’re there
Courtesy and survival still
well entwined out where folks are few
THE BARNSTORMER AND THE BOY
In the little plane, just the pilot and me
up up up into the prairie air
Climbing and gliding and floating free
high above the county fair
The town looked small from way up there
but hell… it looked small from anywhere
It was the changing people into ants
that I loved the best and wanted again
Being on the wrong side of relative bigness
had been causing me a lot of pain
SUNDAY AT MARIA’S
(for Patricia Fiske)
The kind of church
you only get in Austin
All the great gospel singing
without the sermon
And when you put your money
in the collection plate
You get back not only blessings
but also, a taco and a beer