#375

If I can sit next to another
human being, I can sit next to any
human being in the world.

I can embody this hand of proximity,
sitting next to you will be no different
than sitting next to someone
in India, or France, or the Arctic.

And if that's the case,
there are some potential responses:

that I can traverse space and geography,
or that space and geography are an illusion,
or time is an illusion, the time to find
that other person. Or, my favorite,

that we're all one touch away,
and if I can touch you, you are me,
and together we live
in the crater lake that is my iris.

#57

Thick, sea-skeletoned branches
tilt up to each other, this beach hut
looking like the folded hands
of the oldest surf rat in all of California,

the canyoned mud slide mountain
of La Conchita watches like an abscess
as one man fishes, waist deep in freezing water.

Humid horses kick up dust in rectangular pens,
and the gas station attendant imbues them
with meaning--storm's coming, and I've seen
storms before--thinks to cross the road

and warn the fisherman but thinks
the hut will keep him safe,
the ocean is a prayer.

#253

Walking the deep blue streets of a suburb,
middle of the night, not a breath out but your own,
that specific quality, like
being on the other side of a painting's canvas.

You're old enough not to be frightened
by this absence of others, the tree-line train,
small houses connected by patches of yard,
you're old enough to forget the thrill at this night.

A white cat hisses and runs off, frightened by your steps.
Behind the West End Deli, long since closed,
a guy is sitting on the ground, pouring turpentine
into a glass jar, through a piece of white bread.