Novel                                                                                                                                                                                                              

A novelist is a fisherman

searching the eddies

and playing the pools

patient

watching each and every change in the flow

patient

not tightening the line too soon

not blowing his cover

reading the water

not some book

and knowing just when to set the hook

a novelist is a fisherman

fishing for that really big story

it’s lurking out there

cruising the depths

of any pool you’d care to name.

Catch it.

God

If poetry is the deepest expression

in the fewest number of words

so that the ultimate poem might be

a single word

then

god may be the grand poem

if only.

That Moment of Surprise

Everything is reversed tonight

it’s all skewered and soured

it’s been a broken and banged up night

anything that can go wrong has and will;

from the first reach for the glass

and missing by 3 fingers

the gold spreading on the floor,

to the lid of a balm bottle leaping into a dirty ashtray

to be peppered by its laden disintegration.

I’ve put plaster plates in the fridge                                                    

and cheese in the cupboards                                                              

bent to avoid a chandelier

and walked into a door like a Christmas Story,

I’ve seen good green peppers fall to the floor

rolling like tumbleweeds to vanish on dirty varnish,

and dropped my dinner in the garbage.

I’ve banged my head on the stairway

as I bent to pick up the keys that fell from my fingers,

and slipped on the slick of that spread of gold,

falling on my ass,

in that little moment of surprise;

All in that moment of surprise;

that little moment of surprise.

There’ll be a time when you’ll get there too.

My Time

There’s still snow on the mountains

little flecks along the flanks

except on the big one

the big snow cone, still covered

and my daughter sits elsewhere

in another home,

even though we don’t have a home;

this Cold Creek Inn

and that friend’s house;

the trucks pound on down I-5

and the pink clouds pass over Castle Crags.

It would be a major statement to say that I sit here

in a cheap motel

solely so my daughter could commune with an old friend,

but the truth is

I like these cheap old motels;

and I like to suck down beer looking out the windows

of these cheap motels

wondering just when it is

that my time

will come.