“I learned nothing was safe or certain – least of all desire”
She moaned from 6 feet and 50 years ago in black
and white in the old play that should not have been adapted for
stage much less screen.

The pronouncement was like canned beer – easy and cheap,
but is that what you want passing through you?
Is that what the dogs think as they dance outside
our doors and windows, peering in, wondering
what we are doing with these glowing boxes
and so much time.

It’s what I think of the mountains by my home –
not the soaring granite majesties of my 20s in the
Sierras, but great moundings of earth and broken stone,
all and all the property of flying biting things:
is this the profit of time, the mindless
cud-grinding of the earth?

Maybe there is only the lying down in the cold sand
and soaking up the burning camellia majesty
of sun fall while seagulls commune
and the little stover-plover-rovers roll
on hidden wheels, in and out on the tide,
dreaming of clear blue glaciers.