CURVE OF WIND
D PRESS
ELLENSBURG 1989
Cover collage by the author




DNA DREAM
        for Tresa


You dreamt you saw frozen DNA,
but really it was an angel, coiled
and waiting to be discovered
in the palace of your mind.



BIRTHDAY


A Sagittarius, you know
romantic love is invented.

All your cluttered days
culminate in this fact.

When friends come to the door,
your living room breathes.

The cake says, "Have a happy life."
Voices bubble like champagne.

Open your presents.
Laugh, and risk another line.



NATURE HAS NO MEMORY


Nature has no memory.
The past vanishes like winter wind.
I look out your window,
down the steep hill shadowed
deep with leaves.
I gaze on the sun,
a lake of joy and pain.
Can I trust the day?



SURE SIGN


We are alone in your home,
talking of this and that. We are
the only reality.

It's winter, and it's warm.
Our hopes are upside down
like chickadees in a tree.

This is a sure sign
Spring has come in December.



ASTRAY


It begins with the sun going down.
Venus flings off her gown.

Who is drowned
emerges from the sea of drunken illusion.

Astray, I am an atom
whirling.



HEART, HOW CLOSE YOU ARE


If you seek me,
look towards the lake.
I have fled from the zoo.

This time, I am myself.
My pheromones
are having a field day.



CURVE OF WIND

Rosco and I wait for the fishermen to return. I sit at a wooden bench near the store at Mt. Baker Resort and watch the clouds change shape. Rosco has my belt around his neck and an eight foot tow chain hooked to a tree. Dogs must be on a leash. Ducks and rabbits are loose.

An attractive teenage girl wearing white shorts and a pink short-sleeved top sunbathes in the light breeze. I see one cloud as Tristram reclining and a small round cloud as a cup he is proffering to Isoude. The girl listens to her Walkman and glances my way from the crook of her arm. I cannot reduce her pubescent curves to mythological planes.

A tall, burly boy with his gray t-shirt cut along his ribs comes carrying an armload of boxes and kicking a couple across the grass to the fire pit. A dramatic and disruptive act.

Above them the clouds move ahead in a larger current. The breeze off the lake takes up the huge cardboard ashes from the fire and sprinkles them on the girl. "Thanks, Ron," she says, getting up and shaking her towel. "I'm just trying to help out," he replies from his red pickup truck.

A couple of tame rabbits hop by. Rosco can't even lift his head with the weight of the tow chain. The rabbits disappear under the porch of the store. Still no sign of the fishermen. The cloud that was Isoude has become a free spirit and will not drink from the cup.



To Volume 2, Book 7