Pilgrimage #23: If Wishes were Rain

But could I place this mossy riddle tree

into my pocket, sleep with these gnarled root

charms, bring them home by plane with me,

damp with northcoast rain to pour onto the hills

of different trees burning, burning,

burning, making evacuees

Pilgrimage: Day 23: Paintings

He is painting the rooftop
It's blue not gray
It may be a canvas
Though we could not purchase
It for twenty-five dollars
As the Matisse once commanded
They bought and lost
Bought and sold
Bought and saved
A cycle of paint
Of canvas or cardboard
Slept with the painting and the painter
Then watched them fade away
On the back of a slow horse

Pilgrimage: Day 22: Evening

fog rolls across bay
no sunset except machines
glowing on hillsides

Pilgrimage #22

We chain ourselves

to the tattoos acquired

at birth, Our Lady G &

the smell of roses from

the blood of C;

vases weighted down

with Chimayo sand. We

remove our shirts and engrave

our shame on damp, darkened skin,

cutting. Once there was a living

room hung with icons; now

there is a self-made prison.

Sanctuary in bottles,

in wrappers. Crosses at

the intersection where two

collided, and

someone died.

I am the mother &

you are the child who

lowers his head.

This is the very dry

landscape

we walk across

like nails. Burning

to come home to

the foothills so dry

they no longer hold

anything pungent.

I am a woman weeping.

You are my brother.

Pilgrimage #21 Redirection

River below as skies burn above

Arizona smoke screen over our sun

Could I but lift this dart of green

and sling it in the direction

of all that burns, adolescents' hearts

Americans in Afghanistan, Iraq

People still ashamed

Could I but redirect the past

with a drenching of sky split open

of green sliding all the way down to drink

Pilgrimage: Day 21: Ethiopia

two men speak Amharic
while the women with babies 
elegant Giacometti sculptures
sip coffee in Peet's
another young man speaks into

in Africa the soft vowels 

his phone to a woman

a sweet music I don't understand

but try to memorize
like the symphony of the souk

Pilgrimage #20 Stirring

Stay with your memory:

Bronzed elephants

appear across the road.

I pull over to capture

this smile on the sidelines.

Trunks reaching.

Feet planted.

I jog back across

to my car, the day opening

just a little to the imagination

stirred like a drink, a memory

made in simply glancing

over my left shoulder. Their

displacement on the dry lawn.

Old folks home trembling

with the possibility of

animals crossing.

Pilgrimage: Day 20: Crossed

I waited to say
stay
there was so much to be done
so many bridges and xxx
excess
Of things and people
excess
Of time and space
I waited to say
stay
bur before I could whisper
you left