Cardinal November

The sudden cardinal’s red

In the bare winter branches.

The autumn leaves fled.

A single flake dances

Its pirouette down

To the crisp dry bedding

That blankets the ground.

With the wan sun setting

Into the grey horizon stone

Under the lip of the cloud.

Cardinal with all color has flown

Before the soft settling shroud.

Somewhere I know spring will return

To us, and yet I fear

The months till our colors again burn.

Spring so distant, our winter so near.

The Summer Before Our Lives Began

there is this photo
i took of you
when we were twenty-seven

the summer before our lives began

a brief stop along highway 1
to warm our toes in pacific sand
and burn the central coast blue
into our eyes until orange spots
played on our retinas

the tide was out
and the Montana del Oro sun
dazzled off your white t-shirt
and the kelpy breeze blew your hair
across your sunglasses and your lips
slightly pursed
in the middle of saying something

i look at you now and still see her

(and i can’t decide
if that is sweetly romantic
or deeply unfair

to both of us)

Fossils

The choices I did not make  

accumulated below me as hardened limestone.

Fossilized shells

of what once lived and breathed.

I stand on this cliff

of unlived lives

and look at the breakers below,

hearing their whispered “what if” in every crash.

She calls me,

the wind whipping her brown dress

around her bare calves.

I turn to her.

“Coming,” I say.

And leave behind

the choices I did not make.

My Sister's House

The passage from younger brother
to only child
transpired in the ventilator’s last hiss.

I remember
sweltering summer vacation days
at your house.

The only air conditioning
cold showers and lemonade
and the breeze of our jokes.

And me riding my bike the few miles
from our house to yours.
My first real taste of freedom.

I never knew
about the beast,
by turns snarling and whimpering,

that you pushed into the closet and locked
tight before I arrived
I only saw my big sister.

And even now,
years after the last scrape of the curtain rings
around the hospital bed,

that’s still what I see.

Metronymous

Doors swish open and shut.
Flow of faces in and out.

Corpuscles in an artery under a
microscope as the heart pauses

between beats.

White cords dangling,
Eyes on books, ceilings,
Phones, or floors.

Anywhere but on each other.

Save for a forlorn glance
at miniskirted thigh,
and inward sigh.

While she
perfects intentional obliviousness,
eyes fixed on a Kindle.

A coincidental jumble,
Rush hour juxtaposition.

Lovers or friends, perhaps,
had they stood side by side
in a bar.
Or reached for the same book.

Here, encased in their
electronic chrysalis,
act alone in a crowd.

Neither Predator nor Prey

The beige man

(“desert khaki,” the suit catalogue purred)

crumples into his beige car.

(“brushed almond,” the brochure sighed)

Settles for another day.

The dog, front paws clinging the sill, catches his eye
through the window as the car reverses -

(“Stay home,” they both think)

The road winds ahead into taillights and vanity plates.
No horizon, just steel and glass and grey suits
and coffee cups and last minute make-up,
and texts interrupted  -

(A lucky brake)

Behind, green trees and grass and
the dreams of last night and last year
recede from the rear view mirror
behind turns unconsciously made.
And made. And made.

He walks the sidewalk savannah
In pleated camouflage
Is a lion not tawny?

(But beige is not tawny.

No heads turn from the watering hole as he passes)

He fades into the office block:
Occupying space, without volume.
No air displaced -- a true Wonder Bread of physics.

(Did Archimedes control for pleated slacks?)

Neither predator nor prey, just
beige.

Mood

Navy dirge,
or placid green.
Steel depths,
or laughing aquamarine.

Clouds pass
over protean ocean.
Is color within?
Or merely reflection?