The Christine Poems
Cumulous
A cauldron of clouds
Building towers
Reaching high windy places
The cauldron in my heart
Waits for your aura
To soothe these
vast desperate spaces
Golden
Will I measure up
To the golden boy who spread magic before you
In this sweeping star field universe?
Deep places within must speak for me
As we ride careening tailwinds
To rest on distant sand beaches
Songs I write are born from your gaze
Look to me until I no longer have eyes
And know my love was steel
​
Passage
Are you now home in my soul?
Found a locked tangled passage
to my deep places?
By spinning round in golden circles
I can’t figure your adoration
Though it lifts me beyond curiosity
As the nightengale loves the dark
So shall I love you as the sun
Night
Night comes serene and slow
Wind teases a tender branch
Cat-claw and mesquite
shed olive to gray
Sky shade curtain closes
Foreshadows dark Atlantis
Buried in silt
Mourns its lost sun
Light flickering on my stove
Burns soft like a woman
I search for her glance
Her hair, eyes and touch
then—she slides to me
Interlocking arms
Into my empty soul
Filling it with longing
And peace
​
Cirrus
A striped sky
Patterned algorithms
Legible to madmen and shamans
​
A cirrus wind hunches my shoulders
And I see your contrails
Left like haunted stones
​
My songs strain to bring you back
Yet they twist like tangled roots
In search of new earth
​
I am left with broken pictures
Feint and clouded images
Of your constant beauty
Waiting
Her curved skin like a glass
Holds a portion of ancient sun
Clouds are soft fire in her hair
These words are far away
And cling to awkward branches
In search of her glance
Night is a cruel mother
When it empties silver to black
And lines spoken true are left cold
Lift the reticent light
And let the clockwork moon
Find her sleeping
In a burrowed bed
Moon
Alone, this night passion wains
The moon is tired
Held by a band of stars
Dead leaves whisper in a dance
Slow like a pavanne
Mourning a princess lost
These images are waiting for
a word to break this
Incomprehensible silence
And light dusted by a breath
Of another
Sighing like an ancient tree
The Jay Poems
​A Rose
​
A Rose will open shadow
I reach without touch
Your voice overcomes me
Distance is like stars
You make me hungry to see
Like swimming minnows
Confused in darkness
In rivers too deep to dream

I love what I cannot reach
Imagine slow yawning clouds
Want for scattered rock beaches
Waves insistent, yearning, as they must

Your silence cuts like cold nights
Still, the breeze calms, comforts
Night carries your glow, a constellation
Searching in the weathered sky
You have not yet been named

The strings of rustling moments
Torment me as waiting indifference
Stilled wild horses
Crushed in ragged corrals
Pinned like moths against screens

Come back walking slowly
You are an apparition in shadow
Let me wake to you, breathe forest
Light shows only furtive lies
Prove your restless and beautiful truth
Show your full awakening light
​
Moonlight is silence waiting
Darkness is distance to be measured
Sunset is my only hope
And you my only longing
Phone Call to Canada
​
A voice again
Soft pulse of breath
across wired turns
under cold stars
Distance a landscape of gesture
Of strangers and shadows
Incidental squalor
A smooth night
Blue dream of distance
careening to her
Waiting in ordered rooms
She moves to brittle windows
ice-flecked, darkened
Night madness
A tethered field
White elegance of death
over curled grasses,
sleeping webbed cocoons
She sees eyes through the
pane rattling in its mortar
Arctic song
Sisters
​
My altar draws soft
edges of light
Candle and wine glass
Sisters in curved skin
hold brooding passion
​
A nighthawk shrieks
Curious stars observe
Rabbits crouch thin
​
Night opens
like a cirrus flower
to gathering ferns
A pollen offering
​
The moon records
these sacred acts
Replacing longing
with solace
​
The wine prepares
my pallet
for a lunar kiss
Languid and sustained
Without beginning
Without end
Cholla
​
I cannot wait
for an answer
Across electronic mystery
Sweet moments arrive
Wait, wait
​
Words form
I don’t like waiting
Your words romance, cajole, teach
I don’t like to be taught
Wait
​
I like my friends
Wary of lovely writers
They are colleagues
Acquaintances
Wait
​
You are like dawn
Soft sun across the wash
Pink in the cholla circles
who gather with their kind
Insist on domain
Guard with barbed vigilance
Wait
​
I am cholla
We are friends
The moon is a silent and weary partner
​
The moon is a silent and weary partner
Its cold light a steady mother
to my alter candle
​
The flickering image on my table
Is like a child
struggling for sleep
The moon and I agree to forget memory and roses
Waiting is the practice
of remembering hope
​
We are like souls, the moon and I
Ice Age
Blanchard Lake
carved by
a cruel mother
in secrecy
Left to grow
silent reflection
on a steel skin
No witness recalls
the story of
ancient silt
sleeping in blankets
A heron slices
into sunfish dreaming
Lily pad armies
hold cloud mirrors
to a slow rhapsody
of breeze
White birds ride
heat’s edge
to water
Girls’ laughing bends
against dragonfly air
The elegance of time
bows reeds into
a ritual prayer
Hermit
​
So you can’t handle friendship
You love me too much
I should be flattered
Yet the day has blackened
As others before us
And then our own blackness
Such sad demises
From such talented folks
Fine to cool it—take in some museums
Catch up on reading, visit relatives
Still, how quiet without you, silent really
In a heart that has built new walls
​
And—an announcement
I’ve decided to become a hermit
Give up women altogether
They are so complicated
Require high maintenance
If you are claimed
they won’t let you follow your heart
I’m wondering if romance is
worth all the bother of niceties
The calls and requisite emails
Asking after Blair and Aunt Sally
Her brother’s gall bladder
Noticing the new dress when
you meet again
​
I opened your picture on the computer
And looked at your smooth brown skin
Eyes flashing—in perfect tune
with your smile
I closed it quickly, it’s gone
Never to be seen again
Except in a publicity shot
Maybe on your website
Don’t want to see it anyway
I’m becoming a hermit, remember?
Hermits don’t have computers
They have long beards and live
in thick tangled forests
In sorry hovels without heat
Mumbling to themselves
Picking their teeth
​
With Bowie knives recently used
to clean glistening trout
Just caught from the swirling stream
Near the sorry hovel
​
It’s quite scenic really
The only difference is me
I am practiced cynicism
I grumble at the shrieking blue jay
Chase after crickets
singing 2-part rounds at night
Oh, the scenic part
The forest opens before sharded rocks
Giant gray teeth in clusters
Ardulite forgotten by ice ages
Strewn and forlorn
How sad—yet attractive actually
Beautiful caskets lined
on ragged bluffs and green shadows
I’d take a picture but
Hermits don’t have cameras
Sons and fathers
​
​dedicated to Jeff Cravath
Sons offer single moments
for fathers turning clay
into patchwork vessels
Fathers offer poignant age
for sons to carry wet verse
into a clean day
​
One gathers light
The other, remnants of stars
​
Voices interweave
As a Bach invention—
Counterpoint of blood and bone
The press of hope and despair
The trading of cool reason
​
Declining light breathes
through window and dust
Gravity rests easy weight
on the symmetry of night
Two souls stretch over miles
Wind and crumbling hills
Dead grasses tremble
The arching flight of voices
Creosote and mesquite rattle
The moon carving its high place
​
A father and son call together
The mystery of time and words
To seek a story
Ancient and new
Holds a portion of ancient sunThese words are far away
And cling to awkward branches
In search of her glance
Night is a cruel mother
When it empties silver to black
And lines spoken true are left cold
Lift the reticent light
And let the clockwork moon
Find her sleeping
In a burrowed bed
Moon
Alone, this night passion wains
The moon is tired
Held by a band of stars
Dead leaves whisper in a dance
Slow like a pavanne
Mourning a princess lost
These images are waiting for
a word to break this
Incomprehensible silence
And light dusted by a breath
Of another
Sighing like an ancient tree
Boulder Creek Pool
​
​The creek in this desert canyon seeks clarity
Like the preening cat, her watery fur is cleansed by rock paws
Whiskers of mesquite and sage twitch in shifting light
White Coconino cliffs rise to catch the failing sun
​
The easy turning of pure coolness is its tumbling
Through a stone maze—purring to skittish waves of a pool
The sylph stretches out her liquid form, serene, inviting the touch
I tasted her beckoning—once in the high sun
​
After following a twisting trail with too much in my pack
Boots off, I plunged into the collected blue
And felt the sudden unreasoning of a chilling womb
Rising to the surface, I lingered like a primordial newt
​
Deciding whether to evolve or remain in this animal world
Where the blood of life is revealed in strewn rocks and talking water
Within these playful breezes and metamorphic rest
The decision is less than straightforward