Glossolalia peppered with names
Simple statements firm orders Let go walk
Telling me to do things a game
That made you laugh also knowing
When things were in different ways the same
Blue truck blue sky your face glowing
With delight as your language grew
Till description became a kind of telling
Power I spit out the sun I sky the blue
Sitting in that living room together
Each in his own world surprised by new
Things spaced out lost to each other
Used to each other like Siamese twins
Confined to the house by steamy weather
Me watching volleyball on ESPN
Listening to Beethoven reading the Post
You moving your trucks around babbling when
You felt like it absorbed focused lost
In your own space so fully that watching you
I forgot my many selves collapsed to one and was most
Happy the past is gone David I asked beloved of
God do you remember Bethesda
The way my mother would have
Asked me Do you remember Zion
And David looked at me curiously and said No
Dad not really I know how the house looked but all
That comes from pictures in Mom's albums you know
Yes my first memory is not of Zion but
California the Christmas I was three a brown
Trike put together by my dad next to the tree but
My dad tells me he bought the trike assembled
How can we say what did or did not
Happen David watching you I tremble
You know the world are sophisticated
You say you do not remember
That time and now you know so much of hate
Of anguish of death
Will you ever again be so elated
By the sight of swans swimming under the wharf
Shrieking with laughter as they dove for tossed bread
I hope we are these moments deeper than self
Deeper than memory always connected
Inside each other hoping
This helps hope stave off dread
Brother of mine boy receding
I will try to remember for us
The time when you could be so purely happy
I SAY GOOD-BYE TO MARS
Hiking alone in the Sierra Nevada
I stopped one evening in Dragon Basin
Above treeline by a small stream
Trickling down a flaw in the granite
On the floor of this crack were
Lush little lawns green moss
Furring the banks krummholz bonsai
Clustering over low black falls
Transparent water glossed on top
Standing there I looked
Over the fellfield basin a cupped
Hand of stone catching rocks
Inlaid with a tapestry of plants
Lichen sedge and saxifrage
Tippling green the pebble all bare
Under jagged ridges splintering the sky
Beside the rill I made my camp
Ground cloth foam pad sleeping bag
Pack for a pillow stove at my feet
In the failing light my dinner steaming
To the gurgle of water and the sky
And the stars popping into existence
Over the crest of the range still
Alpenglow pink spiking indigo
The line between the colors pulsing
As they faded to two shades of black the number
Of stars amazing the Milky Way perfectly
Articulating my fall up and into sleep
And was never tired
Dreamed the same dreams
And heard the rockslides rattle and thunder
In the throats of these living mountains
Something woke me I put on my glasses
I lay looking up at stars and the Perseids
Meteors darting across the starry black
Every few heartbeats every direction
Fast slow long short far near
White or some a shade of red some
Seeming to hiss slow down break up
Firing great sparks away to the sides
In their wakes I watched held by granite
Entrained to a meteor shower beyond
Any I had imagined possible the stars
Still fixed in their places lighting
The great shattered granite walls
Of the basin all pale witness
Together to fireworks one
Plowing the air right over the peaks
Fizzing sparks over Fin Dome
One shot down just overhead
Wow I cried and sat up to look
As a great BOOM knocked me into
A dark land sparked by fire
Fires burning My God
I cried oh my God oh my God
Struggling to get out of bag into boots
On my feet out stumbling around a smell
Like autumn leaves burning the past
I took up my water bag and crashed about
Quenching fires that reignited
As I ran to the next oh my God
And ran to the stream and stopped thinking
That here was the action of my life
Putting out fires where there was no wood
Vision crisscrossed with afterimages
Of the final fall green bolts
In every blink of the eye finally
I stood in the dark understanding
There was no need to hurry
I came to a chunk of vivid orange
A stone standing alone on a slab
A meteorite still glowing with heat
I sat down before it
I calmed my breathing
Cross-legged I watched it glow
I put my hand out to it
I could feel its heat some distance
Away the pure color of fire