—Yellowstone National Park
Wet maw of earth painted like a parrot fish frilled
at the banks saying AH with extraordinary breath coffee
makes my teeth earthen plant them and grow a city
when I go don’t bury them deep scatter my ashes
like the spring’s rings in imperfect concentric circles
each one a different shade on a cliffside color is how
geologists tell the when I want to know the why azure
turquoise kelly-green canary mustard apricot I swear
Earth is a carnival queen embellished here by heat-loving
bacteria around a boiling center they say life began
in a pond like this volcanic and sun-splayed
minerals washing down the mountains into the basin
where the unfathomable happened why
is anything alive? why do tourists throw their refuse
into a pot of phenomena? why aren’t we extinct yet?
all I know is when I was young I wanted to be
something grand I stand by the railing and watch
Record Rainfall
I read a devastating line of verse and then the sun came out, the first time in weeks. I was masturbating as I read and looking out the window. Many things were happening. Each drop of dew on an oak leaf distinguished itself—a clear round seed. In the distance, the storm painted gray walls behind the pines, but in the foreground, ferns shook out their hair, striking me with light. Am I halfway through my life, or a third? Everywhere yellow needles from the wet year. They fell in an airy rain and continued to fall as the day dried. The young pines looked older than they were. The ancient oaks, never greener. The sun beat down on them both as I stepped from the house like something else that was still itself.
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