#42 Los Ojos

Lean far enough out of the door

Of what remains and you can carve

Your initials into the infinite

Then your name will be fed with

The inevitable. Rain and straw and mud

That catches until the wind

Takes it higher toward tin, toward

Snow, toward dissolve and creature

Scurry, earthen joists and finger bones.

Pilgrimage: 42 Weeks: Embrace

looking at this rose
full open red ripe
I know that in a day
or two the petals will droop
dry then fall leaving the hip
behind to be eaten by birds
or to drop to the ground unseen
this rose imperfect
models spirituality
I embrace
imperfect hesitant brave approximate
I know that in a day
or two I will change
consider then fall leaving the bone
behind to be eaten by birds
or to drop to the ground unseen

Call and Response: Having Lost Count

Why must the

cameras rush

so at

the demise

We bow our

heads

to think

We do not know

we are being

photo

graphed

The sky is

rolling

its eyes

Pilgrimage: 41 Footsteps: Window

golden light adorns
the Café walls
fragrant coffee with toast and jam
lovers unable to refrain from touching
the student staring out the window
you and I listening to the words
war is over
war is over
at last
and again

#40 Filling Station

No one stopping any longer

for service at this station

Only the four remaining letters

hint at staying for a fill-up

Chain link fence marking boundary

for this, museum of cracked concrete

and thirteen red bricks imbedded

in the headless neck of its roof

Pilgrimage: #40: October Afternoon

Waking so late the afternoon
becomes morning
the crowd demanding
espresso has waned followed
by the relaxed unemployed
who sit at small metal tables
resting from the early search
We share pastry and drink coffee
from white paper cups
the black lids hiding the rich brew
while the Bay fog slowly rolls in

Pilgrimage: #39: Coffee

late afternoon on a rainy day
pumpkins roses
and caffés lattés
if we measure our lives
with spoons
surely they will taste of
chocolate

#38 As pilgrims we

encounter our mothers who are healing

and the work underway for she who is

failing. We read the signs -

some foreign & some hard hitting &

clearly we are the new maternal

promise. End the war now. Paint

the path with cautionary heiroglyphics.