The 2River View

inside the bird

there is another bird  

inside a song there is another song

if i had to do it again     i would not ask to own a horse

but to be owned by a horse

to have no bone between me and the chiles

drying on the adobe’s wall

i have spent so much time sorting the stars

into pieces of silver

but I refuse to call the moon sinful

it is better to say she is a rock

grabbing the light of a yellow dwarf

i sit now in this house

a life inside another life

sometimes i am afraid     i will be poured

over a dusting of rivers

but inside the ending

there is another ending

and inside the wind     an orchestra waits

to perform its season

into the amphitheater

of our bones

Moonless

In order to remain competitive and avoid cliche,

the poets stop writing poems about the moon.

For years nobody describes it,

or even looks up at the night sky.

Poets focus instead on terrestrial immediacy.

The certainty of machines recording 1s and 0s as data.

Eventually the moon fades from all mention,

disappears from memory.

One day star-gazers and astronomers look up,

and it’s gone, deleted from view.

Nobody can remember

what it looked like, or if it was even there.

The poets keep scribbling, of course,

but their connection to the cosmic weakens.

The size of their poems siphons down

to smaller associations. No more tides pull

on the heart from heaven. No more eye-

of-god looking into houses of the suburbs.

When they describe the truth

of the universe, they can no longer reach

for the silver of something full,

a face in infinity watching over us.

Instead they write about a bird bath

under a porch light for reflective glitter,

and for god, a porcelain bowl,

holding an empty spoon.