Buses are the best poems
As they slide along
Spurning the pavement.
They are not of place but are the things
In between.

They do not think of being buses,
Dwell on their busness, thinking,
.
“I need a taller roof and
better glass” or mourn
“I am trapped by the dirt
Of the road.

No. They are buses.
They are proud.

In the Younger Days

Come into my heart
with ravenous delight
and there find butterflies
gathered by the mid-afternoon pools.


They rise with cymbals
and sweep towards the sun
on the last thoughts of the storm
as it heads into the nothingness
of bright days.

Let time be an orphan
and duty an unfed beggar.
They howl and are unanswered
While the young of all ages
Go about the business
Of astoundment.

Do not pause:
it is against the rules.

Summer

Alive in summer’s yellow glaze
There is no time
It sulks in the corner
While all around are swings
And fast feet.

Drunken tomorrow wanders longingly
Around the house
The bones of yesterday are white
On the beaches.

We have been here too long
the elephants sing.
What do they know?
Trunk-tied and tusk-bound.

It is the dawn of the last minute
And midday of the first.
While the next comes careening
Around and around
Lost in sweet dizziness
And reverberating are the shouts
Delight is everywhere.

Continental Rift

Always the sea tumultuous
How could it otherwise be
Over the things we can’t see, hear or touch,
Where the light does not venture
In the land where sulfur rules
Where the news comes floating down
Bits of the world
To things that do not know a tree.

If it grows cold,
There’s another smoky eruption
And colorless things rise on the flume
But not too far
For the bubble crushes down
Black with a shining tongue

And things scamper away
From the sense they do not know.
So it always is in the darkness.