I am told there is danger on those peaks of Mt St Helens.

August 13, 1945 a few days after the bombing of Hiroshima, when the news finally reached her threshold. News of human power, of human destruction and then fast forward to post May 18, 1980 after explosion like 500 Hiroshima bombs transformed an old growth forest into children’s tinker toys left out in the snow. I remember going to my studio on Chestnut street and seeing the papers, the photographs.

So I drove 21 miles into nowhere today, to a ghost town just over the mountain to the west. Wooden sidewalks, an old weathered church, log houses with white chinking, dust blowing down the street like some old black and white western movie or late night rerun of the Twilight Zone. I am remembering the last time I was in Montana in August 1976, just slightly passed the 200^th birthday of a nation and the 20^th of a boy/man. It was right before I was to start art school and right after high school. Yes, long story there of personal Hiroshima bombs blowing out the bridges of youth one story at a time, and of the last two years of trying to drag my sinner’s ass through the eye of a needle, and even that needle was not an answer for me.

We were all heading to Yellowstone, my father and his new young wife, my grandmother and me. We were having this conversation about the mountains, the high desert, the elevation and how thin the air was, while I’m remembering the log cabins in Medford Lakes New Jersey, Blair’s house on the lake, the dock where we used to jump from the highest point into the cedar colored water, the baseball dugout where Karen told me as she gave me the ee cummings book “somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence, even your most frail gesture”, like her silence later that night before I headed out west, traveling now across these vast wastelands of sagebrush and big skies and thin air. So thin that day in Montana that I couldn’t catch my breath. I kept taking big gulps of air and nothing would satisfy my hunger for simple air.

I read somewhere that every time you inhale, you are reminded of how much you are loved.

There were three of them in the wind

Hearing the same music

Of water slipping over stones in the distance

In that rhythm

I can’t quite imagine

It’s just too close

And it doesn’t lend itself

To human fingers

The kind that have been seen

In the darkness

Where there are no streetlights

Not even the streets

For the lights to be strung across

Why do I feel so un-alone here?

With these silver arid hands,

And I only notice the three

Off of the path

Just before they burst into yellow

Bees and butterflies

Wallowing in the final

Sun of summer

Before she descends from her lofty palace

With her cool white skin

Caressing all that was,

In her forgetfulness

Well I’m here now in Montana moving my daughter into her new abode, installing the washer and dryer, trying to cut a hole in the back door, which is made out of sheet metal, for the doggie door, meeting my daughter’s two room mates and I’ve had lot’s of time, precious time, and huge open spaces. Yes, big sky country indeed!

Last night after our dinner of mac and cheese I headed out back to sit on the stoop to try to find some new rhythm on my frame drum. The sun was setting over the mountains to the west, all red and two storks flew awkwardly overhead like two canoes with a single rower in each, veering off to the left and then right and then left again and the one following complaining in stork sounds as they flew over the vast fields of grass. I had more knowledge of where they were going where they had been then I do my own awkward and meandering pathways. I wondered about what I have manifested with my intension to fall in love with everyone I meet. Yes fall in love not just love. Guess I never really considered the possibility that there could be another side of that intension, the other side being someone falling in love with me.

22X30” Watercolor on paper

I’m not sure what to do when you love this much,

when you desire so much life-blood flows down your legs

in pools at our feet,

An African dance

The drum calling in that push away from me

Pull me into you sort of way

The ocean singing in soft tones

And crashing

In tears

Leaning against the back of couch

Because I needed that bit of distance

Lest I just get drowned in the whirlpool

Venus dressed in barnacles and neglect

That wisp of hair

Across the gap

With gentle fingers

Before the drum calls

This Body

This body, this flesh,

Job’s

Though worms may eat

This body

Still

An anchor

To this bay here

A thought machine

Spinning stories

Of what it imagines

It is,

Or could be,

The place where

Dark matter is

Kissed sublime

Somewhere a green door opens,

Somewhere she sleeps,

Somewhere the path

Between two trees

Shortens

Somewhere a great notion

Somewhere I have

Known you

Closed my eyes

Before drifting

Off

Imagined myself

The marrow of your bones

And how does it

Feel

When I touch you

From here?

Lunch Box

The other kids rush to finish

Their lunches, yanking

Plain sandwiches out of pails,

Brown paper bags, chips and perhaps

The cookie first

And saving the apple for later.

I’m so slow,

Not wanting to rush through this

Wanting to feel

The gooiness of half smooshed

Peanut butter and jelly,

Loving the saltiness and

Crunch of broken chips

The slippery feeling of grease

I lick from my fingers

And the best part

The warm fuzzy and that sticky

Juice

From the peach I save for last,

Running down

My cheeks

Through dark woods

The Model

She walked in

I had the space heater on

And I remembered

The bottom of her feet

Were dirty

I wanted to wash them

But it’s just not

Professional

To touch.

I suppose flowers

Don’t mind when

You are gentle

Removing the yellowed

Leaf?

Or the peaches

Don’t mind being

Behind the plums?

Her scent

Yes, this is what I drew

I looked at her wet dark eyes

Like she had been crying

And later as I crossed

Through a crowd

I heard the music

She must have been listening to.

I went to the library today

Ben picked out movies

Twirling the racks of dvd's

Twirling through the aisles

Passed children

Seated

Shhhh silent

I picked up a book of poems

By Billy Collins 

Turned to page 32

And learned about love

And languor

I have been hiding lately

Behind the bookshelves

Somewhere between magic

And poetry

And are you also hiding

Somewhere so near that I can't see you?

Neither of us dare speak

Pretending the other

Is not there or

If they were

They would not be paying attention

Our noses glued to

The words of others

Avoiding

Not looking

At the blank space

Left

Where our words

Passed each other attending.

I think that cells

Split in two and

In two again

And again

In one unbroken continuous chain

Through time

Knowing that someday

Soon

remember?

my bones, my skin, my blood, my flying/swimming dreams,

that space neath the table where the groan ups don't dare look

where that ticklish feeling rises up like Kundalini himself

spreading out like a feast for two

my calm fingers found you

like the taste of the slightest trace of strawberries,

salty skin from sea spray

and anticipation,

the waves of sea foam

and blond hair

so exquisitely concealing

a place to rest my cheek

the rhythmic pounce of water on rock

the warm flow through sunlight

through crevice

the swirl of sea

around a wet dark stone

I heard your soft breathing before dawn

I woke you up

you didn't say a word

but I understood everything you meant,

the northern lights on the wall,

the pink through the white translucence,

the clear silence

The dew had fallen heavy

I could feel the damp through my shoes

A pavilion quiet now

in the early morning.

you sleeping behind the door

I closed with a hush

I could hear the music playing here

like a ghost

A single buttercup in the wet grass

called

and went back to dreaming

beneath your sleepy head.

30X40" Watercolor and Indian ink on canvas

Standing in a doorway

Right passed the over turned garbage

Can with vegetable scraps

And cactus hearts

Spewed out

Slinging an old guitar

Shouting

To no one

To anyone

Who will listen

In a tiger striped outfit

Wild hair

Like some soapbox preacher

To an unknown god of one

We pass by

As he mutters

"It's Halloween everyday for me"

So unlike Sandy

And her serial monogamy

Boy,girl,boy,girl

Paperdolls

Cactus heart

And vegetable scraps

Left behind

On Mission street

The scent of rose incense

Drifting through the open window

Where

"Jesus loves you"

is written in Spanish

And you know I love you

With all of me

And I would say it more often

But it's just too big and

It takes a while

For me to travel

To someplace where

I can actually

Touch you with this desire

22 X 28" Watercolor on paper

That evening after you left me sitting by the Lillie pads,

The swamplands

Where wooden boats

Were brought in under the cover of night

And you know they are building now

Above the alcove

Where we lounged that August

Seventeen years ago

Our legs were touching

And I didn't dare move and

I wondered if you noticed

I wanted to say something but

I couldn't

Lest the magic be lost

Like something alive

And buried in the Earth

Covered in the warm darkness

Covered in snow

So I risk nothing and I lost nothing

Just Lillie pads

Floating in the evening light

And even their forms I can't conceive

It's always just the hum of cicadas

On the south side

Of this mountain

That seem to hush

The moment you get close enough

To touch one.

And her arms are the wind

Swirling in the tree tops

And her kiss

Rain

The lost lake of Lakeside Drive

Is now gone

Or maybe I just couldn't find it again

The tree I sat on had to be there then

Because I needed it to be there then

And now

I wander through a grove

Of white Rhododendron

Hearing the hum

So close that I think

It must be me

singing