Read an Excerpt

Fire

I’m having a swell time reading Lonesome Dove,
glad I still have 400 pages to go,
but this paperback is one of a thousand things around me
I would not grab as I dashed into the street if the house ever decided to burst into flames.

I probably couldn’t find the cat for all the smoke filling every room,
so let me see, give me a minute . . .

I should have thought of this earlier before the fire trucks arrived and men in helmets were rushing past me.

But here I am out on the lawn in a bathrobe with a few sleepy neighbors,
red lights flashing all over us.
I’m holding a photograph to my chest and the cat is sitting next to me,
apparently mesmerized by the flames.

I’m happy with my choice as I look down at you and me in a frame.
Here’s a chance for a fresh start, I figure.
And as for the ashes of Lonesome Dove,
I can always get another copy, or maybe that’s just where I was meant to stop reading.


Marijuana

When I was young and dreamy,
I longed to be a poet,
not one with his arms wrapped around the universe or on his knees before a goddess,
not waving from Mount Parnassus nor wearing a cape like Lord Byron,
rather just reporting on a dog or an orange.

But one soft night in California
I walked outside during a party,
lay down on the lawn beneath a lively sky,
and after an interlude of nonstop gazing,
I happened to swallow the moon,
yes, I opened my mouth in awe and swallowed the full moon whole.

And the moon dwelled within me when I returned to the lights of the party,
where I was welcomed back with understanding and hilarity and was recognized long into the night as The Man Who Swallowed the Moon,
he who had walked out of a storybook and was dancing now with a girl in the kitchen.


Ode to Joy

Friedrich Schiller called Joy the spark of divinity,
but she visits me on a regular basis,
and it doesn’t take much for her to appear—
the salt next to the pepper by the stove,
the garbage man ascending his station on the back of the moving garbage truck,
or I’m just eating a banana in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.

In other words, she seems down to earth,
like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase and no one’s there to meet her.
It’s a little after 4 in the afternoon,
one of the first warm days of spring.
She sits on her suitcase to wait and slides on her sunglasses.
How do I know she’s listening to the birds?