The Last Line

The Santa Anas Arrive

 

The shift in the wind a pivot, and I opened my eyes: 

the waves became soft, curved walls resisting

the change so slightly, as much as they could. East

of here, the old hills line up waiting for houses

to come and go; on the shore, the sand remembers

the hills. In midst of all this memory, I make 

a sound like “shhhh!” that the waves ignore. A gull

seems circumspect, looks at me askance, but calls

anyway. . .In the hush between the breaking waves,

under the smoothing hand of the offshore air, clarity;

I find what I’m seeking in the persistent absence 

of peace, the insistence of sound of air shoving water, 

the silence at the moment of arrival: the noise after.

 

 

Insight

The moonlight dispersed by the curtain—

That’s moonlight! Not the same as realizing

the cell phone tower’s posing as palm;

not the same as that's a cell tower.

Finding the old teacup broken in the bottom

of the box, you know at once what it meant.

 

(You know you drove home because you are home.

Where have you been? It’s Wednesday already, 

withholding meaning. 

 

Looking at these hands,

seeing also what they were. Remembering her, 

decades ago, turning them over in her own,

looking then as mine do now, saying with such

grief, self-pity, “They’re so lovely, your hands.”

My hands. Her hands.)

 

                    Finishing the thought,

I see my face in the look you are giving me now

and know I will always know.

 

Momentum

 

(Like) the desire for something lost; 

the ever-shifting shadows the birds cast; 

leaf-shaped space on the branch (

the fallen ginkgo leaf): Winter’s gone, but light

lays low, foreshortened on the grass, fading—

causing the grass to fade: Within, it brightens,

even as without it fades (knowledge/the body)—

These lines don’t run parallel, but thread like thoughts

through us, constant inequities: Knowing this, 

held together by the possibilities

                                 of consonants and  vowels (aspirant

vows): Making words that believe

what’s gained is hidden in what’s lost: 

a kind of metaphorical momentum: Not like. Equal to.

 

 

The Object of the Possible

 

There’s a sense of concordance, this place 

and this version of me. Causes questioning.—: Do 

you know, the effortless art in the gull 

banking made me ask, Is there any one

thing I do without effort? and then: How 

do I know the gull? Me: presuming. 

The invisible line in this visible line

comes similarly, the laws of mental physics, 

like air flowing over the passage of wings 

in the blue-white sky, the gull grants grace

to my philosophy, an object of the possible.

 

 

Tuesday, Green and White

 

Morning sun through the open kitchen window

spotlights the movement of my own hands 

as the sparrows bicker on the neighbor’s roof.

Slicing fennel on the cutting board: a soft,

clean smell. Clocks on the stove, the wall,

the microwave in harmony with the fridge hum,

the summer solstice. Grass widens the cracks

in the concrete, bit by bit, as I work the bulb,

plan. For my purposes of here, it is July

(or it is July), and so the sun lingers over LA

and gives us all the sweet illusion of more time:

dispensation, so we can know the sparrow’s 

chirp and the smell of fennel better, acquaint

ourselves with the moment of the knife.

 

Where the Attention Lies

 

Alighting there, on the aeonium preparing to bloom:

[the sound of the mockingbird mocking the purple finch,

the new Alt+J plays on the radio, an eastbound flight

has left LAX, the neighbor takes the trash out, leafblower

somewhere, distant hiss of noon on Sepulveda, the terror 

of the terriers accross the street spotting the skateboarder

shouting at his cellphone] the eyes can see the sunlight

in a form so precise it can move the mind to silence.

 

The Too-Literal Realist

 

The gold finch is dangling from the verdi gris 

branch, a pendant on a tarnished chain.

April already has the warm smell of soil.

This is Spring in the vernacular, the mind alighting,

and everything evoking. The ruby tips

of the sumac leaves, mountain tops at sunset.

But the garden falls off from perfection so fast—

spent blooms plop down and stain the walk

greasy brown, the sage has rot from the rain.

Already the mature color of their summer 

green pushes through the translucent paths 

of river-like veins, resonances and meanings

in the lost leaves below, old feeding new words.

 

These things make without intention, forgotten 

meanings much the same. Strike the word, and it 

sings, whether or not you hear, even if you don’t

strike it. Did you see the elm, the one by the park, 

taller than last year? And the moon waxing gibbous. 

I know; you didn’t see. That is where the Larger Bear

would be if it were dark / That is where it is.

This is my mythology: Ask me, What time is it?

It’s all in the syntax, the arrangement.

The far cry of meaning is what we imagine:

I am—I feel it—it is a gladness—sourceless—

Useless / as if I am a conduit for some desire

Only the gold finches understand,  the ruby tips unfurling.

 

The present meaning eats the past, an infinite

feast; the dead leaves feed the soil, an infinite fast.

 

 

Equals Sign

 

I put the mirror on the ground and at once the ground

became mirror-shaped sky. Then I was both places (at once), 

like the ever-line where the sky feeds the sea, wandering

in a kind of exile—exile: an old word—from myself.

The mind forms a metaphor; the metaphor, a form of mind.

 

The mirror (is) on the ground: the ground is infinite there:

My love is a red, red rose. My love is the cello’s long-held

note in a minor key. My love is your fast-fleeting laughter falling

off into silence. The half-moon seen between the high rises.

The sky searching in the mirror (on the ground) for its image.

The Wave on the Horizon, Venice Beach

I

The sad, slow-moving shape of a sailboat

traces the horizon line with a mast tip. 

Voices lost in the wave-chorus. Shape 

of the line-up mimics the brakewater: 

Wetsuitted surfers sit in rock patterns, 

pushing at the ocean. A brave little 

sandpiper scouts around the tourists’ feet, 

legs moving faster than the eye can follow—

if it cared to follow. The January sun turns waves

to pewter as the tide turns, returns;

somewhere, the moon waxes while the gulls’

shadows slide effortlessly over the sand.

 

II

 

Knowing that it’s an illusion doesn’t make 

the horizon line unreal—Here, where the ocean 

may pitch up white and slap the shore, 

begins there, where an indifferent-

colored sky meets a tangible blue sea: That

line is a surface. Reach out your hand: meet

that place at its conclusion. Debris sent

ahead: A feather. A rock. A sand-brown leaf.

 

The space in sound just after the line

breaks

 

and a new one is begun