blind sister dread
blind sister horror, sleep
and I … alarm sister
shall watch for him
while sea-foam hiss
your senses charm
there … there … dreaming
now, sight be my turning
against his thievery … he
mighty gods empowered … he
who would steal my vision
to catch the flash of moonlight
upon his mirrored shield
and I would not open to him
access to sequestered power
of sister serpent hair
for she will petrify him
to behold the potent
in her image
terrifying
In Spring, when Aeolus breathes
across their farms, girls boys lift
diamond butcher paper balsa wood
tied kites into his breath to feel out
currents, pull and sway…to test for
dominance of distance draft and lift.
Should such taunting pastime flag…
especially when Zeus streaks bolts
of lightning from his distant clouds…
their sporting turns to trouting with
live worms on hooks on lines on fish
poles by Naiades’ stream, in wordless
rivalry for the longest rainbow…best
tussle with a catch…finesse in reeling
out a gasping fish onto the grass.
When distant shouts bell whistle,
or the slant of shadow from a tree,
summon them to home, they end
camaraderie for one last sport…
these young contenders on a field.
They grasp hands tight slippery
with dirt spit sweat…link a ragged
crack-the-whip-snap for one last
quick elbow jab, foot trip, arm jerk,
stubbed toe, let go, fall dizzy to the
ground…as they play out their mythic
childhood of no tears, first middle last,
win lose…high tension…limit testing
dominance of lines.
she…the listener for gods
often came where they were not
or just had been
sometimes from her Sequoia redwood grove
she heard their thunder voices echo mountained
heard cursing thunderbolts crease high Sierra air
anger sharp as ax strokes blading firewood
in dark drowsy of her morning sleeping bag
she felt vibration beneath her on the earth
the thudding of their charge as they chased
crashing through the forest or were chased…
heard their deep rasped breathing…later
found fresh prints of their padded feet
they rushed sighing through pine branches
brushing there invisible with their whispering,
and they left hieroglyphs with cryptic meaning
for her to scry in ash and embers of her campfire’s
blazing crackling tongues of blue gold lift
up to the clank and whistle of far distant stars
as she…the listener for gods…she bat like
heard presence of their ultrasound that
often came from where they were not…
or where they just had been
we four around a desert campfire
with Kayenta Chinle Wingate distant
strata set to black on navy blue
and August brandy in our veins
were quiet…quiet…then William,
our William, offered Coleridge to our
thinking themed as it seemed there
and then to sparks and dark and cold
he voiced from memory an ancient
mariner…he lay before us staging
of a burning copper sky and chill
emerald of ice floating ominous
in far storm distant, lonely seas…
he flew an albatross above us, and
wrapped consequence around
the neck of our…imaginings
he recited to the now as in days
when he and his buddies…Mike and
Tony…sometimes Jeff…on afternoons
on park benches, lawns, basements
a park somewhere in Oklahoma…those
men… almost… brimmed with word lust
and just because they could memorize,
went forth with Whitman from a harbor
somewhere near Brooklyn where the
bard mind fucked them all…all again with
his ingraining…or one of them would
line out Homer…daze their bravado hour
when they escaped Cerberus’ mouths and
dreamed of melody that Sirens sang
Occasionally, memory fading, our William
struggled for a word or with his hand
waved off a sequence…yet…we were
spell-bound in the night around the dying
embers glow of words…imagining
Proem... 
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