Two Doves

The song of two doves
Cooing amid the pale light
On a power line above the street,
They drove away my morning fear.

It was that dry silence of the long afternoon,
The cooling-copper sun
The empty, parking lot sky:
Tension ate like a slow acid
Cut with a deliberate reptilian precision
Trickled sawdust in the mind.
Evening came
A heavy cart, creaking down the
silent street
Dragging a sickly moon.

Soul of an Afternoon

Soul of an afternoon

Sunlight on an empty couch

White wall that glows

Gentle fan, stirring overhead.

The carpet is a wide plain

Clean savanna inhabited only

By a silent pair of kicked off shoes.

Face against soft fabric

Warmed by the bright light,

The end of my quiet nap

Evening coming on.

Soul of an afternoon.

Crossing

Triumphs in love and pain

Wandering forever, home again.

History of a river flowing

Stratas of lost emotion

Across primeval waters,

Passage of Angels go.

The land at sunset gleams

Desert rocks on glowing cliffs 

River ancient, eternal flow

Portfolio of petroglyph dreams

Forgotten tribes and fossil trees

Green Gingko Biloba leaves.

Triumphs in love and pain

Wandering forever, home again.

Edge of Glory

Sky path

River road

Whale cotton pods

Sky dome drifting on the rain.

Shining chorus, 

Silent plateaus

Cities afloat, ocean of blue

Slow migration

Morphology of clouds

White buffalo on a cobalt plain. 

There Were Dinosaurs Here Once

There were dinosaurs here once, 

When earth was young & green  

Jungle ferns along Triassic seas;

Now just a roaming wind

Tilted fence post fields 

Empty sky with several clouds;

Deep ocean mountains loom 

Tidalwave wall, white foam cap horizon.

This is lonely place 

A long story without breath yet lacking punctuation.

Orange cones guard late model trucks

Tired work crews fix broken roads

A brutal sun beats on tired hills

A skinny deer eats faded grass

Mute witness to highway marker 59.

These are vanishing points of history

Forgotten woodbore termite tracks through time 

Insignia of nature's nonsyllabic passage 

Petrified eternity, frozen centuries domino stacked in line.

Wyoming

Thru whistling windshield

Panorama? Monotone yield.

Wide grass plain

Bumpy two lane

Powder dust skies 

Rising wind sighs

Old West stills

Gentle rolling hills

Black dot trees.

Before modern gleam

Lost primeval dream:

Beneath ancient seas

Slumber many dinosaur

Trex, duckbill, brachiosaur.

Under land the government owns

Lie fallen, silent & mighty bones.

Montana

Wealth of Montana hills

Grey-ribbon roads stray-dog chase winding grass-snake streams.

Ranch hands with copper skin

Old men in cowboy shirts,

Worn boots, denim jeans.

Houses and barns

Tiny in valley vistas

Cows and horses

Plastic toys that move.

Evergreen mountains

Trees upon trees

Roadside bright,

Far horizon, faded black;

Then,

Deep ocean, white studded,

Pacific BLUE.