WA to LA: 15 years

I: Whidbey
There is a drum, like a slow, resting heart
just beneath the surface
of a sweet high flute.

Everything is green, green.
Trees taller than God
rocks that shine black, sharp, along with the cold of waves
that touch leaping salmon.
And rain that never stops, creeps into your pores
to lay you out into salt and blood and cold.

There have been volcanoes, here, dearest.

Remember that night,
driving along the shore, we saw
fire,
hanging low over the blue of a small close mountain--
hot, round, touching a cloud that hugged it too close?

We wondered what it was,
for a while, orange, just in a spot we could not imagine.
Our guesses ranged widely but then, embarassed--
suddenly, the strangeness was gone and it was just the moon.

That same old lady who has been following us forever.
Glowing with harvest, eye hiding in a winking cloud.


II Shreveport

Everywhere an animal you did not expect--
tiny whitebacked lizards bite at gnats in the hot pink lantana
a possum burrows under the bamboo
a turtle ducks its head behind the white coneflower cluster.

A wild fox prowls the patrician neighborhood at night
scuffs up against the topiary of Mickey Mouse and a Bear.
Leaves red stringy fur.

It is green here, but in a younger way,
a toddler's
insistent energy.

And the years between stretch --
an instant gone by,
but so much change.
"The volcanoes here are mostly in the food," you laugh.