And the Earth

Smoke haze bleeds into every canyon
of the watershed like a gaseous poison;
mountain ridges lost in gauzy softness
and gray-blue monotony.

Like a line of poetry played out to its bone
of meaning, or meaning itself, a tarnished sky
at day’s end knows nothing of its beauty.
Dry broken sagging dead trees rotting

got nothin' on me. The dog days growling
in the clouds, the leaves trotting in the wind.
Each weed or weed stalk weaving in air
and the earth a mystery underfoot.

Beaver Creek

Cascading water and spidery ferns
green as pine needles in sunlight,

I look upstream. The canyon climbs
skyward and shadowy where it slopes,

fat boulders pebbled in the dark creek,
the granite shades of black and white.

I plant a thought in the landscape,
and slip naked into the water alone.