Chuckanut Bay

Pretend not to see the great blue heron,
or it will fly away – she said – pretend to look
at something else – anything else.
Look at the etched sandstone relief along the beach,
and the purple sea star hiding in the green kelp
below the kayak. See the fossilized palm trunks
protruding out of the stone bluff, and the gray diurnal waters
filling the bay. But don’t look straight at the heron
which too pretends to see something else – something hiding
in the water, but still keeps one beady black eye on us as it stalks,
as if it did not care and only stole a random glance by accident
at our yellow line. If it knows we’re looking
it will take flight and be gone. Don’t stare too hard –
look at something else – she said.
I looked instead at the little streaks of gray in her brown hair
and the tan line on her back from years in a kayak
and the half-hidden, tentative smile on her small mouth.
Pretend to not see the thirty-five years of living that slipped past
since we last spoke to each other as children.
See instead the sandstone cliffs or the starfish or the fossils,
and not the laugh lines around her eyes
nor the question in her face as she turns her head
away from me. Look there – see the sky turning pink,
the cedars leaning out over gray water,
the sun setting behind distant clouds,
the Lummi crab pot markers and the distant boats going in,
and the great blue heron stalking sculpins.

Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem

I watched you kiss the kid in Carharts
playing pool in the Old Timer’s Tavern.
You slammed shots, laughed too loud,
and slipped out the back door.
You came home at 8 AM, wet from the rain,
and we never talked about it.
Once we went to Seattle to hear Carmina Burana
and on the way home we stood at the prow
of the Bremerton ferry, drank vending machine
coffee and cognac, and I was King of the World
for forty minutes, until I got home
and stood alone beneath the blossoming tree.
Then one day you finally rode with that truck driver
to whom you swore Undying Love for somewhere
in Queens, New York, and talked of welcoming
the New Year from Times Square,
but you got out in Indiana and called for bus fare
and I didn’t see you for three months,
and when you came home you had a tattoo
on your left breast.
And when your daughter was born too early,
lived for two days, and was gone,
you refused to give her a name
so I made one up for that doctor
who filled out the last forms and
someone wrote it on her stone.

Poem: Untitled

In the moonlight I saw souls
leaving bodies in a flash of light,
bodies dropping like puppets from cut string,
skin, bone and hair no longer held together,
white bones waiting to be picked clean
by sharp-toothed rodents and soft insects.
Once bright – shrill – wondrous – laughing,
and now still as stones.

Joy lasts forever,
but spreads out in waves,
thins to almost nothing,
imperceptible as moth whispers.
That bright complicated soul laughed so loud
like bright light – shrill – sharp – everywhere,
quick curious and then gone.
In the moonlight I heard the sound that souls make
leaving bodies, laughing like pebbles
dumped from a rusty can
into the current.

Poem: Leaving

I want you to be the last thing I see
when I step onto the station platform,
when I load my bags above my seat,
when I look out the window,
when the train lurches away
from this town.
I want to see you
standing below the station clock
in your blue dress, waving,
receding in the distance,
gone.

Poem: Pompeii

In the end their lives resembled
the empty spaces in the ashes,
the last citizens of Pompeii.
Spaces when filled with plaster
reveal their final seconds of life,
pain forever focused in their faces,
mothers forever shielding children
and couples forever embracing,
frightened bodies reaching
for the thing they loved most
at the instant their very souls
were ripped from their moorings
in a blast of fire.

Desperation is not quiet,
and this is the most desperate thing –
to be alone again, confused and afraid,
covered with ash, children unshielded
from the final scorching heat,
and a middle aged couple embracing
in agony on the upper patio of a terraced garden,
where two thousand years later
a young dark haired woman –
a student, too young to know what they felt
but who would someday know precisely –
will meticulously reassemble from a pile
of colored tiles a mosaic image of their gods –
and see again the last thing they saw.