fields to peel

i can't recall or is it
i don't want to. memories
cut with a foul odor
as if nothing were ever beautiful

back then. how can i say
there was never laughter
but that's how i remember it-never,
unless it's tied to pain.

always the tear behind the smile.
the way you gave me away, worthless










**


i'm practicing to be
a little old lady.
feet socked, legs blanketed
perched by the window, looking west
rocking slowly, slowly
to sleep in the sun. what dreams
should come in birdflight above the bayou
i'll let in again, powerless to stop illusion's progress
into delusion. the crows line up three four
to a lampost, gulls sweep acorss the muffled sky.
the dryer tics in the laundry room, calling
warm! warm! and i shiver
crows drop from posts to limbs to ground
the line on the on the lights everchanging but steady
till the one they were waiting for arrives,  they
 all disperse in notes across the  glass
falling off the page of the window/

this room was my son's
but i've changed it. given it a paiint job
and a new floor. when he comes home
from college he likes it but doesn't
recognise it. i feel guilty till he says
i don't ever want to come back here to live.
taken a bit aback i ask for clarification and he's like
you know, i'm almost twenty, i have
a life to live. i smile and think well
i guess i've done my job ok then.



*******























this year i've been watching glaciers
melt over florida. right now there's a thick bank
just calved over my head. two days ago
the melt off filled the sunset, aligning along
tidal paths, like the ocean pulled all the way out past the sky
  left  its imprints in the sand, smell of cirrus.
the slanting sun lights up the comet tails of fighter jets or aliens
i cannot determine which, because i have seen
too much of everything else and wish for something new.














******









i've opened the window to let out the smoke.
i can't write without smoke and mirrors
 below my window ducks dig
 in the front yard marsh.  while gulls
haggle and fight over the pond
 just beyond the trailers that block my view.
once the ducks laid eggs under the hibiscus here.
once i bred magic under the ferns and aloe.
i told my self this would  be the non smoking room
but the cold air pushes the cigarette back in. i wonder
how opaque the window film is, can the ducks see in
are the gulls flying in circles to watch me write?
i have become concerned with privacy since i met you
yet you would have your tale told in song or
novel form. it might make a best seller i agree
if i write it in some new form.  otherwise
its tawdry details seem like an impossibly coinicidental plot
from a jaqueline suzanne novel where i am the saviour
you found just before drowning in the dark lake of your own making.
you wuold disagree of course. that's what keeps it fictional.

























*(((((((*****


about the outer banks


i heard the parties involved wanted differing
experiences. all well and good but for the time required.
expectations are the death of good times. the past
has its own requirements and one of them
is to remain the past. they say you never reach the same
high after your first hit of the needle. still, you try. you try.

i have a bit of money, a smidgen of vacation time. understand
i have my needs as well. i like your idea, better if i didn't have to travel
so far to experience it, all on a maybe. this is what i think...
i should plan to come up there for a week. if we get to the beach
all good, if not, then we can be poets anywhere, as proven.
if i can get the time off, that's what i'll do. if not,
then sorry, i'ma go out west this time, empty my bucket
a little bit more. maybe we can meet in barcelona after college
if we're still alive. that's a dream i could bare to live through.
i have this thought that ocean is ocean, though i know
it's not true. but the pacific moved like the gulf
though more flamboyant, the atlantic waved to me
all through my life. it's the desert i don't know yet
and mountains exotic as cannibals. the outside of volcanoes
call to me, a trek to places i'll only go once. so forgive me
the dolphin is my home. i need to get away from that this year.












































**********



it's been a long time since i sat down to write.
i want this to be the beginning of a new era.
no more games after work. leave them for the moning.
i want to unwind here, in my madeover room
the one that has no lovemaking ghosts to distract me
from the long tall drink of you. because you
finally arrived and i remember the light in your eyes
not the spotlight, candlelight, streetlight
you know what i mean?












































*********













but it does seem ridiculous a bit
the way i had to reveal myself and us
to find inner peace. i wonder what this next phase
is going to show.