For the Kids
Sitting on the edge of a summer scene
so my cigar smoke doesn’t bother anyone,
watching the kids flop in the bouncy house,
the invasion of uncles pulling their legs,
the aunts: an admiring seashell blocking the driveway,
and a council of grandparents
seated in beach chairs on the lawn.
Now that the sun is setting,
nobody has to take breaks inside,
though the AC is still on.
As the sun slips lower, the grandparents
will blink off, one by one—streetlights
showering their spots with shade.
Uncles and aunts alike will fizzle from sight,
ceasing their dreamy orbits like fireflies,
who do not know it’s night.
And then we will be the next to go
when the sun sets completely on this summer scene,
banding with the elders’ darkened glow,
making our presence felt with shadow.
Blue Voyage III
heads of stone face the waves that rush / clapping against the body of the island
shallow lip of white / against the rising of earth / flowering in sharp green trunks of life
parabolic line of erosion / eruption etched into the rock / crags smoothed and jutting
upright before the deep blue / warm under a thundercloud / full-sail drifting
like a slow oncoming storm towards a nameless place, where people and gulls pass
wondering, staring, waiting as the land fades into sea and the sea into sky / all-beginning
forests drink up the alchemies of water and air / from the root of the wide Aegean shore
speaking of life in color / the palate of textures rough and dry under unforgiving sunlight
falling over spectrums of earth where the blue sea becomes green shore / whitened
crests lapping at the feet of dark brown stone / the few and far secluded beaches
until the stone of the nude island mount is shown / white rising in points and crumbling
the soil where trees grow softens under floorings / tufts of immaculate greenery
low atop its height / cut against the lightest blue / wisps of off-white clouds beyond
seen behind sail masts stretching out in the slight breeze / momentums to parallel coasts
waving from water to stone to air / eye level / the boat and a forest / above the sail
toward the sky / the land moves up for a tree / seeds flown in by the migrating birds
it descends with the erosion of roots / weather returning / from light to the deep
from blue to blue / the earth around plunges like an island submerged by silence
stilled to the following of the few who laugh and sing / read and see
listening for the ways of the land between sea and sky / feeling for the depths and heights
of blue, sea to sky / wandering without a hint of a map / not asking where or why
lost between blues and floating over the sea, by air / and on through the moveable forests