Our days are
studded with dawns,
spilling like wine
on the hillside.

Dusk is the groom
in robes of scarlet.
We save our small change
to mirror his splendor
with our homemade lamps.
Some are sardine tins,
and some, emptied cans
of evaporated milk.
Yet, with a wick and kerosene,
a small flame of blue and gold
emerges from our homemade lamps.
Sunset smells of kerosene poured
and rings with the cries of the schoolboys
who sell it.

When the sun touches the horizon
it draws a great strength.
Ruby and turquoise spill onto gray
as when a woman stooped
noiselessly
to touch the hem
of Jesus’ garment.

To be or not to be
suffused with light,
drawn into the wick—
From this vantage point
the moth reveals
there is no turning back.
At the center
of the flame
no shadows hide.

Out of dust
of earth and stars
he shaped us,
and home to dust
of earth and stars
we return.

An ocean of clouds called
today, blanketing the canyon
with purple. Clouds,
like theatrical curtains,
parted over the mesas
to reveal an aperture:
white clouds
outlined in goldfoil.

Only a few drops
reached the overhang
where we sat.
Dipping brushes
in water, we stirred
puddles of paint,
mixing our pigments to paint
flesh-toned rocks
in the canyon.

Water never quite brushed
the rock, rain never arrived,
but our brushes touched water
scattering drops on sand.

My brush
hovered
over the canvas
suspended like a hawk
scouting
hungry to explore
a country of his own.

Turn your sorrow
into something beautiful.
Accept your loss
and multiply what’s left.
Take a lesson from the gardener:
Examine the broken branch
and graft onto it
a living branch.
Then wait for the strange,
new fruit.

A quiet, still life:
the sandstone squares itself
in the face of rain, storm and wind.
After a long darkness,
a small hollow gives way,
yields to rain showers and windstorms.
The arches and windows
of sandstone cliffs
are not easily won.

Once a shell nested here cupped in the sand,
the soft flesh inside offering itself to the sea,
a sea that submerged it and then retreated.
As waters receded, the shell
burrowed in the wet sand.
Then, like a great tidal wave, an uplift
rocked the earth and the shell rose with it,
uprooted on a windswept mesa.

Today, a thousand miles away,
waves conceive the winds that sweep
the landlocked mesa
where, like a scavenger,
I sort through broken sandstone and rock
and carry home the sea,
windswept and marooned,
in a fossil.

I wish my words
could be as fine
as the words of a sonnet
each syllable in place
or as fitting
as the flawless coiffure
of a debutante
and I wish that my words
could overcome you
like the melody
of a saxophone solo,
but mostly I wish
that the harmony
of our lives
might survive us
like that 1930s jazz
we conjure
with the touch of a button.

We are one together
like the dark coffee beans
and white coffee blossoms
like the ruddy henna dye
and the white henna flowers:
your seed gives root
to my blossoms that
nourish your fruit; like
opposites on a visible
spectrum, I take, you give
color, while the puzzle
of our belonging appears
as mysterious to the world
as does the existence
of zero to the mathematician.