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2022 Albuquerque American Place Garden Psalms LOVE Poems

The words themselves are not enough

I am running out of words to say
For how much I Love You everyday
The words themselves are not enough
Because, “I Love You” is never the stuff
That makes a play or poem come alive
To tell the tale of how a love survives
The roughest seas of a love affair
Shared over time through triumph and despair
No. More must be said about how a life
Becomes another’s like the Husband and Wife
Where all is shared among the mundane and plain
When the boring days all turn into the same
How tragedy and pain effects them both
How together, the pair are more able to cope.
Saying, “I Love You” can never explain
How much you mean to me, so I say it again

I Love You
and again

I Love You
and again

I Love You
and again

I LOVE YOU!

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2021 Albuquerque American Place New Mexico Poems

End of Summer

A walk in the foothills
At the end of summer
Still very warm with
A hint of coolness in the breeze
Roasting a landscape full of seed
Getting ready for winter winds
To scatter the next generation
Of thistle and sage across the plain
Cottonballs full of flight-ready potential

Starburst purple Asters and little
Fucsia-colored clusters line the dry dirt and sand
While hundreds of pale blue Dragon Flies
Do helicopter fly-bys filling
The air with their hyper activity
Butterflies big and small match
The colors of the coming fall
And set my mind free
To fly with them on the breeze.

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2021 Albuquerque American Place Arizona New Mexico Oklahoma Poems

Defend The Road

I stand on the side of the road. For she has stood for me, stood for Freedom, for choices, for opportunities un-bounded. Of course, she stands for interruptions as well. Dead ends; roads closed; terminus and for some she is the end of all things before her. The end of a journey; the end of a life; the end of a generation of prosperity. As I stand on the black tar in the hot desert, the orange glow of the sun casting my shadow across the glimmering mirage that dissects her never-ending sprawl across the sand, I can’t help but feel lost. Evacuated from time and space. I don’t know if the sun is rising or setting. There are no clues but my own presence observing the history of her procession across this place. I fall to my knees as if to pray, kiss the hot gravel and feel the surge of every road I’ve ever taken — After hours of driving through the Rockies we reached the end with a washed out road and had to turn back the way we came. The miles of road we travelled all night from Walla Walla to Las Vegas on the bus, the city a beacon of light shining out of the desolate night. Trading cigarettes for whiskey with a Navajo man at 6am when I wasn’t old enough to have breakfast in the casino back in the days before anyone cared that you weren’t old enough to be in the casino buying breakfast and pulling slots. The long drives from Prescott to Oklahoma along I-40 (aka Rt. 66), Albuquerque being the mid-point where I always remembered the dancing cottonwood leaves shining behind the bridge as we pressed on for Texas. The back and forth between Lansing and Louisville via Indianapolis or Cincinnati where the highways were pulmonary arteries throbbing with American life. All of this pavement laid down over the bones of those whose land this once was. So many forgotten dreams of the dead who got in the way of the road’s progress. So much progress fallen under the knee of authority that presses faces into pavement until they can’t breathe because they believe this black road must be painted with white dividing lines. These bypasses that left behind and isolated these segregated communities who now struggle and cry for the American dream that was paved to make way for Amazon and the next off-ramp to the nearest Wal*Mart. And, yet I must defend her. She has given me so many choices; taken me time and again into the beauty of our mountains and forests. She has driven my dreams of change and fueled my ambitions to do something bigger with my life. She has done nothing to us or for us, yet she lets us be good or bad or something or no one. She is my friend and my lover and I must forgive her abuses by the hands of the unworthy. I must revel in her possibility to bring dreams into the night of our awakening dawn.

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2021 Albuquerque American Place Bird Song LOVE Poems

Won’t Run From Love

Sly, daring, road running
Time of Love, not quite spring
But the waning days of winter sing
Of the promise — A Whisper
Of the returning season
Of raising a new generation
Of cunning birds…
This one with Lizard in mouth
An offering for his devote
Lifemate and lover.
In the road they dance
And show that they have
No patience for the changing clime
Rare to take flight, in pursuit he might
Soar from rooftop to rooftop.
With coos, clicks and beeps
He woos his sweet and as we pass
They pay no mind to our kind.

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2021 Albuquerque American Place Poems

Ghost Town

The City is full of Ghosts
Not the dead kind
The impressions of existence
Left behind.
Rarely do we see the signs
Like Coyote
Never revealing her constant
Presence.
She only comes out when
No one else can observe her.

Yet, as I walk out in the
Quiet snow this morning
An entire ecosystem reveals
its passage by…
The rabbit who I’ve never seen
On my street
Has walked around my car
Looking for what I might
Have dropped to eat.

Many, many people whose paths
Are clear from footprints
In and out of their houses.
The robins and finches who
Have come for morning meal.

All is silent but I know they are there
Revealed by their impressions…

Like Racoon and Coyote
Solo trails without human companion
The handish print and claws
And the canine with no walker.

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2021 Albuquerque American Place Poems

Assailant One

Perception is not reality
Just ask The Mountain
She is an illusion…

Presenting herself
Like a bear on hind legs
Much grander much
Bigger – A whole lot
More terrifying.

But the mountain lies…
Not One Mountain at all
Many (mini) Mountains
Each requiring its own
Accent.

Each of a scale and
Magnitude to fatigue
The sojourner who seeks
To run his toes through her
Sands.

She is grand, but
Not how she seems
From a distance.
From afar, un-assailable!

Yet, peel away her layers
And you may find a
Passage unto her loving
Bosom.

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2021 Albuquerque American Place Bird Song Poems

Golden Boughs

The trees acknowledge me
Nodding their heads
In the breeze

Contrasted pillars
Of black and white
Glowing golden

Packed full of
Black birds
Suddenly silent

Then bursting away
In a tightly packed
School of flight

Growing calls
Of the animals
Preparing for the night

Herons tall
And purple
Pecking their evening meal

As little perfection
Can be found in this world
This moment, one–

Lifts my spirit and
Makes me bound
Giddy as a child called to home.

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2021 Albuquerque American Place Bird Song Poems

Crow

Crow, Crow
Pushy
Scared

Crow, Crow
Every
Where

Some in the garden
Some on the roof

Crow, crow
Sacred
Proof

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2020 Albuquerque American Place Poems

New Moon The Waning Year All Souls

The full blue moon set
This morning on Hallow’s Day

A Day for Dead
To be remembered

Alters built
For friends and pets
Family, loved ones
These ancestors we’ve kept
In tales of remembrance.

The power of the story
To recall the spirit
Of our cherished gone.

We long
For resurrection!
And within
These brief moments
They are here
— With us.

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2020 Albuquerque American Place Poems

Piles

The withering leaves
Holding on to the green
As they struggle
Laden with
Snow to control
The last moments
Of their living existence
Short the distance
To the ground
Where they will soon
Be piled up
Into fond
Childhood Memories