The sun just kicked a hole in the clouds
to look me in the face,
as hail like sea salt pelts my windshield.

two standing on the prairie,
shovels in hand--a third at their feet;
he knows no haste, but the diggers do,
for the sun is rising higher, hotter

the herd, the other hands
are plodding north, only their dust
left in the morning sky; the caliche
is baked hard, waiting

for the shovels to dig
a shallow grave, unmarked,
though there is a lone flower,
yellow against a gray plain

the blossom will be his headstone, until
its roots take their last drink, its stem withers,
its petals fall to the earth, and a wild
wind song becomes their dirge

In the pursuit of happiness I walked the roads,
I stopped at milestones, leaned on posts.

I saw a flock of birds in flight,
Rings of gold.. an orb so bright.
I looked around at mountain walls,
The raging sea, white frothy falls.
I looked up at the sky serene,
The valley lush a summer green.
Banyan trees with leaves  bedecked,
Gulmohars lined with blossoms red.

Faces walked engrossed in streets,
A touch, a nod when eyes would meet..
Saw hunger, anguish, weary eyes,
Sorrow, terror, shock, surprise,
I saw the tears of loss and grief,
Faith, resilience, resolve, belief.

I heard the laughter of a child,
I saw the magic of a smile.
A hug, a kiss, a warm caress,
A helping hand that love expressed
I felt the cord of love that binds,
Hearts across the world and time.

I found happiness in little things,
In nature that surprises springs..
His art, the colors that I saw,
That left me breathless, full of awe,
Happiness in that special touch,
In smiles, laughter, that gentle brush.
In kind words that wonders do,
In love that breathes life anew.

In all things that I could see,
I knew happiness begins with me,
Within me what I see or do,
The trail of thoughts I send to you.

And happiness is what I found,
When happiness was spread around.

spikes on graph paper
a biography of the earth's
distracted driving

masses merging with another:
hostile takeovers of stone; skyscrapers crumble,
choking apocalyptic dust in their wake

then tsunamis soar,
a fierce baptismal; my mountain home
spared the deluge though

inside, the family's china escaped
from its cabinet, only to be gravity's meal
and shatter in shards myriad

one serving dish survived,
flesh from the lamb filled it, steaming
only a fortnight ago

we'll buy new plates, ones
that will remain in silent stacks, until
another festive event

or until the seismograph records
another jagged jump, scribing one more tale
of earth's lamentable tensions released

he sat bedside with his great grandmother
stroking a hand laced with what he saw as
tiny blue rivers, flowing from a thin wrist
dammed by ancient knuckles

boulders chiseled by eighty-four years

he read from his book while Mommy
dozed in the chair, and nurses squeaked
in and out, all with half smiles he could
not decipher, for Grammy was sick

and when his mother was awake, she cried

he hadn't seen her tears before;
he tried not to look, preferring his book
with its pictures of the sun, orbiting
planets and mazy moons

and spaces in between where heaven might hide

he understood most of its words,
and none were of heavens--unless noxious gasses
and swirling clouds of dust were the winds which
whipped through the pearly gates

but his seven wise years knew that was not so

when he turned to the page of the
penultimate planet from the sun,YOU-ruh-nuss
he discovered it took four score and four years
to orbit our star once

math's mystery may have eluded him

though coincidence was not yet
in his lexicon, and now he knew Grammy
had her times around the sun, her eighty four
equaling one for the great tilting Uranus

that's the road trip
the boy wanted, once he discovered
the universe was that big

he asked Dad, the closest
god he could find, what was outside
that 93 billion light years

the father did not know
but was open to the notion vast space
was but a bubble

one the lad saw in his bath water
the night before; a mystic mass the boy tried to grasp
but vanished with a finger's touch

for John, it came with
the raucous roar of crowds when he scored
the winning touchdown; for Willie,
when he drove in the final run

for Paul, it came when he charged
a *** bunker on a chunk of rock from hell
he heard no applause--only the rat-tat-tat
of the gun that mowed him down

for Anna, it came with no
sound and fury; only a gentle thank you kiss
from her girl who told her she had been
the best mother in the world

for Rafael, his final hurrah was humble:
a smile from the lady who handed him his last check
after he mopped his last floor, cleaned his final
porcelain bowl, after a patient half century

for me, I don't know when it will be...
perhaps it occurred long ago, in an arena
or on a field I didn't recognize as a place of honor
or perchance tomorrow, when I learn to die

I'm too much of a mystic.
I live in my head.
I always know the words,
before anything is said.
I can see the future,
before I get out of bed.
Sometimes I lay there,
and let it fill me with dread.
It's hard to get up,
when it's written in red,
but these visions have led me
to share my bread,
because I always know
when a heart has bled.
I'm a mystic that lives
too much in my head,
but these visions don't always
fill me with dread.
Sometimes they give me
happiness to spread,
because a mystic knows tomorrow,
you could wake up in bed,
with a vision in your head,
that someone you love
will pass on to the dead.

flung in the back of the '55
Chevy like another suitcase
the child knew not where they were going
only that they had been there before

more than once, when Daddy's
drink turned to anger, and anger
turned to fists pounding a boss
and another job was lost

and the child would again see
the lights of the town vanish: he, the car,
his preternaturally silent momma, his hung over
father would become part of the night

another flight, this time from Gallup
New Mexico, where Daddy had tried
to out drink every Navajo in every bar
and almost did

on these nocturnal hegiras, the child
would lie and stare at the headliner--the round
dome light a faint moon against
a mysterious sky

beams from passing cars
would roll across his otherwise
empty constellation, transforming dark
matter into fleeting nebulae

this, his wide world, while a slow
clock spun, and tires hummed, eternally,
until his father announced where they
were going this time

Iowa, a place the child
conflated with Ohio, vowel sounds
similar, soft and more meaningful than
marks on maps--Cedar something...

Cedar Rapids, and the child knew rapid
and rapid meant fast and fast meant soon, only
a few more saturnine stars around his dome
light moon, soon

though she sat only two
pews farther back, her understanding
of things was different from his  

she imagined the body of the woman
in the casket in quiet, pacific repose, spirit departed,
welcomed already in some beaming crystal sky  

he saw red lips painted on
a powdered white face--eyelids invisibly
sewn shut over empty sockets  

for he heard the big people say
she had donated her corneas, and someone
told him what those were  

she believed, as she had been told,
the woman would suffer no more, and live forever
in a place surrounded by benevolent ghosts    

he did not understand how this thing
called soul could be so hasty in leaving a body
where it had lived for eighty years  

he had watched water drain from a tub  
and smoke from fires leave stone chimneys
and long hang gray in white skies  

she had seen the same, but when it came
to this strange thing called death, the word
she heard conjured magic, not tragic  

he only knew Daddy was not smiling,
and Mommy’s eyes were dripping tears; not one
person in the big room laughed or played    

except for the girl two pews back  
who brushed a doll’s hair and spoke to it
as if it could hear