Mild Moonrise, Zion, 14 October 2016

It was a day like a silent film star bouncing
Off an awning, momentarily upward bound.
My daughter and I stole cherry tomatoes
From the community garden, pretending to be
Good witch and wizard making potions out of pollen
At the picnic table. That kind of a day.
The warmth was warm, the breezes gentle,
The piles of dishes that needed washing got washed,
The camping trip that needed packing got packed.
The paycheck checked; the haircut cut.
Even the late afternoon playdate played out
Into evening, next town over. When it ended,
We came home and watered the lawn until the moon
Appeared to clear the cliffs again, as if it were rising
Not spinning around and around, slowly slowing down.

The Only Hope Is to Be the Twilight, Zion, 13 October 2016

Even the wind has a sort of lifespan. The first and final breezes disappear
Together. No matter when we forget, when we forget,
What we forgot is gone. Toward the evening of a gone world,
The light of its last autumn found and suffused the red rock
Of Zion. The grandeur of the weather is a glorious shawl
Around the shoulders of a petty human being, grieving
And feeling sorry for himself and all his trifling ways.
That's what I was thinking as I sat in a spare chair
At evening while the tourist traffic ebbed and flowed
Around me, but what I said, to a random neighbor
Who spotted me, was, laughing, "I'm fine! Beautiful evening!
The katabatic winds should be blowing down soon."

Halkyonides Hemerai, Confluence Park, LaVerkin, 12 October 2016

In the world under the moon, the shadows stretched and leapt.
Soon everything coasting the extenuating waves would be
So much quieter. For that quiet to happen, other things had to go.
In the meantime, there was a certain quiet in anticipating
The greater quiet to come. A lizard ran along a split rail fence.
Gnats danced in the sun, and the creek, nearly dry, continued
To run. I waited for the green flash of a future bird nestled
Into more gentle rivulets, but imagination must know when it goes
Looking for anything so elegant it's only imagination it finds.
No day ever waveless, no natural history held up
An annunciation of a season of fullness that ever held still.
The cottonwoods would yellow and fall until the creek filled, and then
Something else would waver through the air where leaves had been.

A Series of Fairly Simple Declarative Sentences in an Old Grocery Store, St. George, 11 October 2016

In Maine, in January, 1940, one declared, "There isn't any thought
Or idea which can't be expressed in a fairly simple declarative sentence."
He was complaining about the "rhetorical secrecy" of the tax code,
But he could as well have been discussing poetry (which he did,
In an earlier essay, much too diffidently or mock-diffidently at least).
When one has no thoughts or ideas, of course, one remains hesitant
To declare so. I declare, I was just about tapped out myself
When I caught myself mumbling in a seminar held in a cavern
That used to be the frozen food section of a suburban grocery
Something about genetics and mind I'd written, mind you,
More than a dozen years before. As the mumbling continued
I descended into the secret rhetoric of internal thanatos
And imagined I was flying clear over the whole coded world,
Nothing more to study, nothing to interpret, nor remember, nor declare.

Gallant Monday, Virgin River, 10 October 2016

Dreams were ordinary. Morning chores and quarrels
Were ordinary. Off to school, off to work, off to eat lunch,
Ordinary, ordinary, ordinary. Leaving the office
By the ordinary way, making the usual goodbyes,
That would be the way, the best way to approach
The cessation. A woman who had lived a few lives
And written many stories without apologizing
Came to mind, the words of one of her fictions
Dangling from the late afternoon, tangled like old fishing lines
In the branches near the river. We cease to be
And after that it makes absolutely no difference
Whether or not we were forgotten. We had no addictions,
No cravings, no use for anything other than our destination.
We had lost the sensitive antennae essential
For wanderers, and in the rain the doctor wept unnoticed.

Back-Channeling, Weeping Rock, Zion, 9 October 2016

Grunting encouragement and nodding my head,
I watched my daughter bicycle in the empty lot
Then skip down to the creek below the busy trail
To search for dragonflies and toads. The hikers shuffled by
Above, on their way up and down like Jacob's angels, above
Where I've ever been. I half believe this world
Is veracious enough to exist outside of me,
And I plan and fantasize as if it will carry on
When I'm gone, but I half suspect it won't.
My daughter demanded I stop writing this poem.
Uh-huh, I said, uh-huh, uh-huh, encouraging
Her to keep trying, myself to buy time to write.

World, Web, Zion, 8 October 2016

"I want to share a radius smile" said the caption
Of the widely smiling Moroccan man in the photo he chose
For the website on which volunteers from around the world
But mostly from Europe sought to match up with hosts
Who had tasks and chores, beds, homes, and businesses
In desirably exotic or peaceful places. Cheap, rewarding
Travel that transcended tourism for the largely young
Volunteers, and cheap, rewarding help around the farm,
Hostel, commune, or country home for the hosts.
It felt like compulsive window-shopping to browse the site,
A quick visit to an alternative, happier, more organic, spiritual planet
With prettier pictures than the one on the news, one click removed,
For a visitor like me, always and only a tourist in the actual world.