At Home Depot, a bird
wings to a potted tree;
on its branch, her nest.

Lightning in the forest:
Beneath the ponderosa
the antlers of elk
reflect lightning.

So many shades of bark on the ponderosa—
pale brown, dark brown, blue-gray, even charred black.
But I did not expect to see red, glistening,
on the ponderosa bark that had fallen onto the path.
As I stepped over lichen-carpeted sandstone,
hunched to avoid the cat’s claw locust,
I saw it propped there: a piece of ponderosa
shaped and painted like a hummingbird.
I wanted to hold it, cupped in my hands,
and yet as the light filtered through the trees,
something stopped me. To touch this
slender piece of bark, I would have to move it
from its nest of pine needles. In moving it,
the play of light would change—
the brilliant red-throated hummingbird,
vanish.
.

The key to the kingdom
of heaven was love.
Love was a fish,
slipping through the eye
of the needle, then swimming
between rocks in the brook.
No one could grasp the fish
as it flashed through the stream bottom.
I followed as I could,
balancing bare feet
on rocks of the streambed.
When I lost sight of the fish,
I put down some words on paper.
The words were a rudder;
the paper, my sail.

The rhythm of the bow
on the cello
recalls
the rhythm of waves.
In both, repeated motions,
the approach and receding
of the arc of the wave
or the bow,
rearrange patterns of sound.
Transfixed by melody
and rhythm without words,
my body succumbs;
the numb waves draw me in
to leave me stranded.

I wake
in the morning
early.
I take
my cup of tea
and a folding chair
to soak in the sun.
Well before noon
I retire indoors
for shade.
Lucky rose,
who regulates
her favored temperature
with a shake
of louvered petals.

The surface of the lake,
so beautiful in its stillness,
reflects sky and trees.
Even the path of the avalanche
glistens on the surface.
Yet beneath the lake surface,
trout swim, feeding on flies and worms
that bore through the blue
like termites through wood.
Even the blue green algae
blossom and float placidly
while trout snap their prey.

The portraiture on museum walls
reflects the stillness of a lake surface.
Here we glimpse a glittering world:
stolen images, opaque
black and white photographs
of the warrior and his clan.
Beneath the surface,
a spring gushes—
an avalanche.

Scrub jay
knows weathered gray
of pinon bark,
blue wash
of juniper.

Snowmelt pours into the streambed.
Once the river’s set in motion,
water overturns the sharp-edged rocks.

Repeatedly, spring after spring,
the snow melts, even late into August,
transposing mountain rock
into song and dance.

As snow turns to liquid water,
all that water wakes the dull rocks
teaching rocks to move like gears,
smoothing their rough edges over time,
as if to round each square peg for a round hole.

Likewise, all day
I have been whittling words
to offer you this poem.

Flash of blue
penetrating as iris
eyes a branch,
grasps it,
then shutters
its wings.
Now blue
of jay
folds itself
like an accordion.
Song comes to a close
as the blue seams
of the jay
swing gray.
Beneath shuttered wings
the iridescent blue
flight feather
suspended here
comes to a rest.