Solstice Song
This must be commemorated.
All I can do is write words
while the post-Stonehenge world
rushes to work.
Perhaps, if they listen to the morning news,
the augur who delivers the auspices of weather
will note that this is the longest day
and tonight the shortest night of the year
and that today is summer,
officially.
Only I know the magnitude,
the staggering significance,
the beauty.
I’ll forgo sacrifice,
bird, goat, or human,
but maybe a choir of chanters
should gather on an east-facing slope,
singing—not hymns of praise to the sun,
busy burning hydrogen in its hot heart
and having no room or need in that chamber
for affection for us—
but singing carols of mysterious
monosyllables signifying “we are,”
and we are aware,
and we are filled
with awe.
American Emerging Poets Western Region, 2018
Watching the Sunset at Equinox Eve
I’m out on this cloudy late afternoon
to celebrate the eve of Equinox.
Most would wait a day to mark sun’s rise,
but that’s a beginning and this is an end.
The gray day seems a way to say goodby
to winter’s cold and dark.
I have in my head a cosmos,
a moving picture of the sun, planets,
Moon and Earth, their orbits, positions,
tilts and wobbles and understand how
we face the sun in this unique way
on this special day that divides the solar year.
But I also think like a priest in some
ancient henge or temple, filled with wonder
at the way the world works with the sky,
feel the pull of the starry tide and the
Sun’s great cycles that never vary,
comfortable in the civilizing regularity
that gives order and meaning to life.
Soon I sense a change in light as clouds
begin to drift and lift, part into strands,
and watch as a ribbon of blue
appears above the hills,
and then the reddened unveiled sun
descends into that luminous space,
its vibrant disk filling the valley
with fire as once it claimed
the dark sanctuaries of the gods
in Egypt.
The mountains opposite,
the color of shale before,
now burn in rich magenta,
like the Claret Cup in bloom,
the granite taking its hue
from a descending star
millions of miles away.
The burning sun at one side,
the glowing mountain on the other
and I, centered between them,
am centered in space, centered in time,
centered in this rite of passage
to spring.
Mexican Sunset
Orange, magenta, violet, cerulean,
all in the space of a few inches
at the end of the arm,
yet filling the sky at the horizon
like a conflagration,
some mythical battle of gods,
but all light and cloud.
No wonder that a torrent of bougainvillea
pours over a terra-cotta wall
in front of a blue house in Oaxaca.
Twitterization Nation, August, 2017
Akhenaten in the Dark
Akhenaten
In his royal litter
Lies in the dark,
Listens,
Hears whispers.
They are only whispers.
Akhenaten
Knows their voices are
Only chants of priests,
Their presence,
Only incense.
Their forms,
Only rock-hewn imaginings
Of ancestors.
Akhenaten
Knows the dark sanctuaries
Where they live,
Has seen the Sun
Conquer their courts and
Chambers,
Overcome their stone-bound
Impassive visages.
They are only whispers.
Akhenaten
Knows the One,
The only One.
Awaits,
Will rise himself
To attend its rising
Between the two hills,
Brown Akhenaten,
Blessed by the One.
They are only whispers.
Malpais Review, Spring, 2015
In The High Desert
Constellations
Coyotes
En la Selva
In The Garden of Venus
A New Mexican Poet 