9 Asians wearing identical cowboy hats

was almost my favorite sight in Zion National Park this morning. God bless funny people. Someday, I will wander around misty rice fields bearing bucketed bamboo and wearing a nifty hat of theirs. I owe them an endearing. Plus, I owe myself a dream. I had a stress fracture so I couldn't continue hiking into the Narrows with Dave, Derek, and Alan, so I ended up just writing poetry (of all things--I hadn't expected it). I'm not much of a poet, that is to say, I haven't made the money I hear a poet should; or been trained actually; or written more than a ditty to ask the occasional girl out in high school--so enter at your own risk. Whatever happens, you'll know this: you knew what I was when you picked me up.

Not Far From Angel’s Landing

Water a flowing jade

Etched with light,

The dimmest scratch

Of gold on living glass

Later sinking into a welcomed green oblivion,

Later contorting like obsidian

Born anew to motion

Celestial as the secret of

Sky slipping through this canyon

To touch the faintest turbulence;

And the fall of white,

From high, from megalithic red,

From unknown trails that it has tunneled:

A mist of flight,

A burst of winter’s melted memory,

Soon to be but the millionth streak

Discoloring the rocky haven I long love.

A dream that has not ceased

Is this ghost town come to life:

Every streak undry,

A cataract free falling,

Fed full within a storm with a thousand joyous fellows

All translating slotted cliffs into

A mystic burst of paradise—

Once that dream came true

And I saw heaven hanging in the valley—

Veiled not far from my precipice—

A hover and a hiding and a hint of what I knew

Could be my place most beautiful;

But now, while I see jade has changed,

See unfolding ripples slowly surge like hope,

See the scratches slipping by

On sleek duned mercury--

such emerald and ebony:

the river's ribboning and molten mirroring dreams' sheen for me--

I feel the same.

Words

In Memory of Tom Riddle, Jr.

(and Steve)

"You live in this"

--Shakespeare, Sonnet 55

I pour myself in vials

(the symbols you now see)

As if each were a horcrux—

hmm...

Maybe Voldemort

was just a poet

who hadn't heard of pens

And maybe I'm just a Dark Lord

who still remembers them (!)

Just You

I think the thought of you has been

Rewinding me to Eden:

Before I said what beauty was,

Where once I watched and knew.

Let There Be

From the wet moss’d rocks, a cool—

Where the rock has gills of green;

Where water scales it backward:

A pulse that’s shimmering;

Where tears fall barely staggered

Into black trickling

In which I saw six spanglings—

Sparking like the sun

At its first uneclipsing.

But Blessed Are Your Eyes

Mountains flicker in the foam,

Gliding white on sculpted glass;

Then veins shift on the sand:

The shallows’ dance with light;

And torturings, submerged things

Which blaze the mountains more,

Entirely undisturbing though

The intricate, set shadow:

Clustered leaflike answerers

to wind and sun alone—

And many things I've always seen

unattentively.