Short Gullies Poems

Gullies scar brown earth
     Hurricanes bring erosion
          Of both soil and lives...

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Abyssal, abysmal, profound,
superficial, light, evident,
your eyes change color...
Cracks, gaps, ruptures,
labyrinths, anguishes, throat
your eyes confine my desires...
Precipices, cliffs, gullies
schisms, contractions, insights
your eyes sometimes interact...
Lovers, flirts, friends,
I forgive all this because
I love your eyes
and you... !...

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Wagon ruts--those cut backs
Of roads along a ridge
Heal in natural obsolescence,
Heal with rock and wash ripping gullies,
Bearing gnarled root
And jagging teeth of jutting quartz,
Heal with rain and wind
Flinging seed darts to stubble thickets
For holding in a mountain's side,
Heal and vanish from all those
But that old man whose weight
Was of the time and purposes
Of wagon ruts....

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Busy square around me sucking me inside
Keeping me from seeing what's on the outside
Building shell surrounds me squared off like a hide
Standing on a corner; a square; a block; that's wide

Quilted district patterns are mapped across the land
while larger squares protruding shows zoning had a hand
Suburbs of the city squaring boundaries they have spanned
When all that's left are gullies squared by nature that are fanned....

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The rain stopped,
Heavy bank of clouds remained,
Afternoon was dark until dusk,
No light to draw back the day,
A strong frost shock,
Gripping the land,

Unrelenting,
The trees fell silent,
Along the gullies and wet ditches,
A faint mist was rising,
Winter's last stand against spring,
The temperature descended,

The wood tightened against the cork,
As if the wasted wood might snap of the ground,
A fine crack froze over the dew pond,
The circle of the ice was finally closed....

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The path between myself and the distant man 
twists and turns. There are gullies and ridges
hags and troughs, a hoary dusk.

We are converging. He has my hat and clothes, 
my resemblance.

Once I miscalculated;
I was out on the trackless moors too late, 
darkness fell
I had to lose myself to find myself.

The figure is waving, not in greeting but warning.
As we draw nearer the sky darkens,
suddenly he is gone.

Later I look from a dark window and wonder 
which of us came home?...

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