Poetry

Single File

/ Arambler / 1 Comment

Did I choose this narrow
path, or did it choose me? No
matter, here I am climbing

up and around
a bluff to reach a peak
or some plateau

with the better view
ascending. Clusters
of visitors come tumbling

down—I can open my mouth
to greet them, can make room
for their passage without spilling

over
the ledge.
Or not.

Summer heat has reduced the surface
to sand dust. I imagine mud
and dank air

on another day. This panic when looking
down is my descent into anxiety
of loneliness or my anxiety
of influence. I can’t tell

the difference. Will it tell
on me?

On California Crates

/ Arambler / 6 Comments

“I made love to her under the tarantula.”
—Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Beams and beliefs
before the bottom
fell out

and I became just
another casualty.
It’s not the fur—it’s the dander.

Erasure for a River Ballad

/ Arambler / 2 Comments

You could play guitar inside
a carved out amphitheater
within a grain silo. The notes

that get trapped inside
honeycomb pockets
would resonate all the truer

a roots sound with the memory
of wheat protecting them.
I would stand

a perpetual ovation
in my red steel balcony—an intervention
that gets results.

Wabasha Street Caves

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From sand dunes to glass
bottles, mushrooms, and gangsters
in three easy steps. Discover

the silica potential, carve
out caves for mining, harvest
the goods

and bad and everything
in between. Dank
and delicious, history is ripe

for the stealing. It’s what I do.

Crooked Spirituality

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She knows her guardian
angel is not perfect—
those wings don’t align,
the right one is slightly

bent,

he sometimes squints
when he takes off
over the redwoods
to sail above Big Sur again.

September Laminant

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The clank of faux
pearl snaps on sleeve cuffs
against table top formica,
a message seeps

through wine patches
in the shirt plaid—
not long now, this leg
is coming

to an end. Time
to leave lipstick on another
mug and pull a black velvet coat
over shoulders before breezes

become extinct
for eight more, gusts
take over the glorious
hurl forward.

@ the Saint James Hotel

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It could be tattoos and piercings offered
in the old rail shed behind a grain
elevator that still groans and gives

forth. Could be barges propelled up river
to unwrap another image thrown
back in time. Or a black and burnished

brass Roman Candlestick
telephone and century turning pipe
organ in history’s hotel

parlor. If only my mother were here—
she would know what to do.

Monterey Bay

/ Arambler / 2 Comments

If science is fiction, let no oil
touch her skin under any narrative
current. A miracle

of protection, it remains dry
over a lifetime submerged
in water. She clings

to kelp forests. Air
bubbles are necessary.

Red Wing’s Bay Point

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She stands beside the wooden no wake
sign to calm those rumblings
inside, steps on a bed of soft,
overripe crabapples

by accident. Laughter
in the slippage. She’s been to the island no state
wishes to claim across the channel—prefers
it from this side. Terror is

a walk across the High Bridge that ties
Minnesota and Wisconsin together
along Highway 63. A club soda to gulp
in the Harbor Bar outside wooded campgrounds.

Yes, vista rather than destination.

Red Wing

/ Arambler / 5 Comments

To be plum
with the river, or a bluff

quarried but still projecting
as a barn for the gods,

is
to be at all

bliss on a high bridge
or barge passing beneath.