Surely tear at the surface of the rock
And some few atoms I hoped would stick
As carbon incorporated into my bones
For their seven-year cycle or
For good perhaps and so I sat
Digesting Mars and the view the sun
Ablink through the Berryessa gap
The wind rising each life has its trajectory
Up and down in the shimmer of ordinary moments
Sudden euphoria stab of grief the pattern dustdevil
Funneling down spiraling up in most
Exquisite sensitive dependence
On unknown factors that dusk nothing of the sort
Happened it was a matter of will a
Meditative discipline exerted day after
Day for years to make a world
Transparent in me and my mind at home
And as I swallowed parts of another world
This one wheeled about me like a veritable
California
THE REDS' LAMENT
They never got it right
not any of them not ever
never on Earth by definition
nor hardly ever on Mars itself
the way it was back in the beginning
the way it was before we changed it
The way the sky went red at dawn
the way it felt to wake under the sun
light in the self rock under boot
.38 g even in our dreams
and in our hopes for our children
The way the way always came clear
even in the worst of the gimcrack chaos
Ariadne's thread appearing or not
in the peripheral moment lost
lost then found and walking on
a sidewalk through the shattered land
The way so much of it had to be
inferred through the suits we walked in
cut off from the touch of the world
we watched like pilgrims
in love from afar alight
with fire in the body itself felt
as a world the mind apulse in a living
wire of thought tungsten in
darkness the person as planet
the surface of Mars the inside
of our souls aware each
to each and all to all
The way we knew the way had changed
and never again would remain the same
long enough for us to understand it
The way the place was just there
the way you were just thinking stone there
The way everything we thought we knew
in the sky fell away and left us
standing in the visible world
patterned by wind to a horizon
you could almost touch a little
prince on a little world looking for
The way the stars shone at noon
on the flanks of the big volcanoes
poking through the sky itself
out into space we walked in space
and on the sand at once and knew
we knew we were not at home the way
We always knew we were not
at home we are visitors on this planet
the Dalai Lama said on Earth
we are here a century at most
and during that time we must try
to do something good something useful
The way the Buddha did with our lives
the way on Mars we always knew this
always saw it in the bare face
of the land under us the spur
and gully shapes of our lives
all bare of ornamentation
red rock red dust the bare
mineral here of now
and we the animals standing in it
TWO YEARS
We were brothers in those days you and I
Mom off to work ten hours a day
No child care no friends no family
So off we went on our merry way
To a nearby park walled by city streets
Where Jamaican nannies watched us play
One eye on their charges all stunned by the heat
Kids here and there mom following daughter
Me following you so cautious and neat
Hands gripped as you rose on the teeter-totter
Intent as you stepped on the bouncy bridge
Then tossed your head back burbling laughter
When you reached solid ground and stood on the edge
Looking back at the span you had crossed without falling
Plop on the grass to eat our first lunch
You tease as we eat your laughter upwelling
Pretend to refuse your apple juice
Knock it aside and laugh at its spilling
And laugh again at the flight of a bluejay
Off to used bookstores' dim musty aisles
Retrieving the books you have pulled out and used
To toss on the ground and collect people's smiles
Until I stop you and you throw a fit
And so into the backpack off hiking for miles
Your forehead snug on the back of my neck
Home then to microwave Mom's frozen milk
So that when you wake ravenous for it
I'll have tested the temperature with a lick
And can lay you out in my elbow's nook
And watch you suck to the last squick squick
And then you nap again I write my book
And for an hour I am on Mars
Or sitting at my desk lost in thought as I look
Down at the perpetual parade of cars
Your cry wakes us both from this dream
And we're back at it the movement of the stars
No more regular than our routine
Untellable tedium not just the diapers
The spooning of food the screams
But also the weekly pass of the street sweeper
The hours together playing with blocks
I set them up you knock them down nothing neater
And all the time you learning to talk