Pilgrimage: Midsummer 26: Leaves

diamond voices
quiet before you begin
your night recital
we listen as pages turn
hearts beat to your rhythm

Pilgrimage: Solstice 25: Deportee

these men unloading boxes of wine
speaking Spanish in voices like music
they laugh and work
do they know they are unwanted
that after taking
their land
their music
their art
their food
we say "Enough. Go away"?

Pilgrimage:Twenty-four Footsteps: In My Dream I Still Loved You

passion and then parting
the places we fly over
then the sandstone cliffs
red from iron rough
your kisses for a few days
you return to that place
riches and family schools
grassy yards near sand dunes
sailboats close enough to see
the iridescent balloons
as they release a trail of stars

Countless Days of Soot: The Pilgrim Imagines Climate Change

With the disappearance of acreage

comes a lens to the sky

orange center of destruction's

flower that we cannot

look away from

that covers our dressers

with soot

Nightly reports of what's left

standing as we listen for impossible rain

Pilgrimage; 23 Days: Eviction

the small flower shop
the shop is small
the flowers are the usual size
where each season's grace crowds
the pavement edge
will soon be evicted
It has done nothing wrong
the owner wants more money
the flowers will vanish at Summer's end
as flowers end

Sense

I climb up onto the short wall to stare into the dry 
riverbed/arroyo that I sense is there below. Girl longing 
to find the secrets, to stalk the soft silence of nobody else.
And there the markings on a rock that mean nothing
and everything