paper sky

Fish Swimming between kohl and koto

When I opened the dictionary,
there they were, koi,
swimming through layers
of water, tight skin
notched with blotches—
they could have been cut
with a jigsaw, set
to a throw of the dice—
large fish and small fish
darting or docking with majesty--
all from the same pool of fish genes.
Syllables. Older than words.

Written during the year I belonged
to the Portland Japanese Garden Society,
the closest I've come to meditating.


Found at the National Zoo

One,
like the octopus
drawn on a curve
of the jar.

The surviving lines
from a 14-part poem called
Watching the Octopus.

Riding the Wordhorse

I saw her running
beside a large horse
saddled with rider.
I stood there to watch,
she was running so easily.

I did not know
what to call her--
a colt or a filly
or just a little horse--
she was running so easily.

When I went home--
I looked in the dictionary,
reading so easily about
horse, colt, and filly--

The little horse kept running,
kept running
past bushes and cactus
toward the edge
of the green world,
the blue world
that little horse.

Written in Guanajuato,2002

From Prince Frog's Travel Diary

Another hot day. We stayed in
and siestaed. She was out of temper,
ready to ignore me or burst.
Like a fool, I lay on her pillow.

When she hurled me, my green
skin split. Half a moth flew out.
I stood up on my hind legs,
she saw a man wearing lycra.

I swim, therefore I am,
that's what my father said.

How could she have thought?
Not for me a weak-legged bride.
I like strong legs, green complexions,
gnats on the tongue.

She flung my DNA at the wall,
not thinking I had a father,
a mother, cousins,
sisters. all waiting for me.
Now she's shopping for candles--

this evening I leap for home.

I wrote this version of the old
princess and frog story after
being stunned by summer heat in
another Mexican city, not the one
that means Frog Hill.

Crablady

Our lady

of the hard shell,
soft butter,
firm flesh,

trailer lady
with salty legs,
eyes on the prowl.

Arthropod lady.
Scarlet lady
in the soup.

Better blue,
sea-cooled
and scuttling,

lady.

The Oregon coast is crab
country and somehow I caught
this poem during Joan
Wells' Second Story Books
informal poetry workshop.

The Lure of Empty Rooms

Ants trail along sidewalks
searching for curb-cuts,
drones under cartons
TOOLS, APPLES, DIAMOND A,
bearing one woman's
burden to amber rooms
empty even of moths.

As the old rooms drain
I wonder what genie
possessed me to displace
prisms of air with
wines,baskets, tables,
to start on the trek,

a larva escaping
its box of sweaters.

Odysseus could just leave
it all behind, but he had
Penelope. Portland, 1990s.


Fragment from Colima

Entering the plaza
Leda prudently avoids
four bronze swans,
each in its corner,
its beak gushing water
and everyone dancing

From one of three linked poems
called "Coming from a Dry Place
to the Fountains of Colima"
written in 2000.

Keeper to Tiger

She watches him
pacing the gravel,
tasting the wind,

bright uniform
loose for a general,

masked dreamer
planning his leap
from Elba.

Written after I worked on
a project at the Portland
Zoo, read at a Northwest
Writers event in the mid '90s.


Ways of Moving Past a Cornfield

For years I walked past a cornfield
Green ears one month,
stubble the next,
a few crows bobbing,
grasshoppers scraping their song,
Only my skin listened--
smoke, acrid smoke,
crossed my path,
broke my indifference.
Where stubble had been,
a pond thick as tar
was boiling with crocodiles.

huge heads rear above
the dark edge of the bowl,
swivel barbarous eyes.
The skin bumps glisten.

I move into a run,
see their heavy flesh moving,
ready for mine,
turn my head once
making sure of their presence--

boiling with crocodiles

Drops slide down my cheeks,
not rain, not crocodile tears,
my own eyes filling,
flowing with salt.

Despite its unevenness, I love
this poem. It started as science fiction
but somehow turned into a waking dream.
Written in Mexico in this millenium.

Labels: ants, crab, crocodile, fish, frog, horse, koi, octopus, poems, poems about animals, Rochelle Cashdan, swan, tiger