schooled in flowers
matriculated in bombs
we're trapped in a common dark
hollow-boned with the midnight people
under the bearded earth with its terrible cuttings
away from the stone music of war
away from the empty eyes of ancestors
in a trance of blue-veined dreams
we learn the shape of dry space
and the liquid life below
as winds blow ashes of tomorrow
dust swarms through gusts of quiet
Before the great winds come and the white noise
of night, we'll cut loose from clocks and
stand in fields spread out to nowhere singing mantras.
Before the quiet waits in garments of good bye,
we'll bridge the silence of guitars
and float sound to its center.
Closer to dawn, at almost four
with the wind more
from the west, she
will try to sleep
one more time, imagining the
ground dove’s quiet cry,
always grateful
that daylight’s dull
Watts Towers
22 June 2006
Here where violence
spread like flaming oil
in the sixties,
where neat little houses
stand moated with crenelated
white grilled fences
and today ranchero music
wafts
in the summer air,
I come to see them
for the first time,
Rodia's immigrant monument
to Italy:
welded metal,
cemented tile shards,