Genre: Poetry

Before the Onslaught

What is an ear, but a snail shrinking inside the head? 

The city crawls with men in safety vests 

& hard hats. They swing from ropes, 

climbing long ladders of dust. What’s sadder 

than being

No boats hovering on the river

and the scattered trees hide behind 

a sky-wide sheet of cotton.

Only the fence rises black in the whiteness. 

The birds that chirped in the early morning fall silent 

and the light

Jesus was one 

but I am not thinking about sheep

rather German ones

because a woman from the synagogue

has two beloved pets

of her eleven-year-old twin sons

and she has cancer and is in hospice

and

In the Mojave heat moved like a fever 

through light as if the dusk promised 

another lake just ahead another body 

of palms whipped by a last new moon 

night’s fanfare of black ribbons

listening to the city at night i trace the glow of its breath and 

without light we dance shadow and pour through one another. in 

hearing, in feeling, in arms’ reach.