Equinoxial

What the rose knows
about saving daylight
is dismissed by the poppy.

The first to shed
a winter hull
is the only expert
in the running.

Plant politics.
Put down roots,
face the sun,
even through clouds.

Mud is so less useful to me
than them with stems,
stain my hands and shovel,
make or break the stalk life.

Bloom where you beat the other guise
to light and water,
we assigned such grace
to cutthroat chlorophyllians,

but soil or soul,
it's a battle for the seed
to spring forward.

Night Willows

Worry winds whip

the roof tiles,

pounding the dog's heart rate

a yelp above normal pulse.

Willows bend

outside my window,

storms come

and leaves blow, with an occasional branch,

down the bluff.

I won't walk out on the choppy bay

but go to the sink

for a drink to calm down.

Dehydration a very spiritual metaphor.

Midnight prayers

with morning in mind,

selling the stark dark short.

There is a root

I belong to,

fruit connected to faith,

not shadows on a wall.

Lightning

silhouettes

a trunk.

Man like arms

and hair

up raised.

Jesus slept through

worse than this, so

it must be the dog

keeping me awake.

Buoy Bell

An anchored bell

sounds noon

above a bluff of

fishermen, California seals,

and children that won't wear

wetsuits for years.

He brought me here,

this Lord of the winds, to know

the twenty steps from East Street

to West in a harbor town.

I count the boats

easier than waves;

crab traps, buoys,

mechanical foghorn

in a Mecca like song

to be stilled, and know,

the call to be a fisher

of men, comes with boots.