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| Baby Blue Eyes |
In the foothills, by a vernal pool, I once picked up a toad
that had escaped from my childhood and squeezed it
gently so that it wouldn't squirm or pee in my hand.
Toads disappeared from town long ago. Once,
when I was a flagger, I didn't outrun the viscous
rain dropped from a cropduster. I showered,
drank a glass of milk, but nearly
passed out. Another man ate lunch with the poison
on his fingertips; he stopped breathing
for two minutes before they revived him, the boss
not wanting to pay for an ambulance. Once,
I stood at the entrance to a canyon
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| Ithuriel's Spears, Chinese Purple Houses, Fiesta Flowers |
among flowers whose names I learned in middle age,
the self unselfing, the eternal experiencing itself
for a moment, the delicate purple eyes of fiesta flowers
open on vines that draped over poison oak, a swallowtail
exploring the filaments of the thistle, unafraid
while I watched a foot away, the first oriole of spring
suddenly winging over my head across the river to sway
on a bare buckeye branch and then return toward me,
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| Ithuriel's Spears |
veering away suddenly to eye me from a nearby oak
as I swayed on the cliff. On the canyon floor,
the call of the phainopepla, a heavy drop
plopping into still water, mingled
with the long musical call
of the grosbeak. I sprawled in sand,
gazing upward as the clouds
flowed over, and I could believe
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| Bobcat in Late Spring Flowers |
that I have lived in wetness with the toad,
that my vines, heavy with flowers,
have blanketed bushes and limbs,
that I have clung to one leaf
for ages waiting for some animal to pass,
that I have winged, a brilliant flame, from tree
to tree, eternal and forever changing,
only now aware of a possible end
without grace, and I vowed
never to rob life with its splendor
from mountain or valley
or from any human being on this earth.
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