Sound from the recording studio

Trumpet music spills

into this strange winter

heat and into the street

as I smoke a cigarette

and watch the smoke rise

and dance with the breeze

into the naked trees, catching

it like a dream catcher

dangling outside

a trading post in the desert

somewhere on I-40

all the way home.

Raleigh, NC

2-22-2012

Son of the West

I’m still getting used
to the the customs
of the Land. Today,

I was pleasantly
mistaken for a
Rhett, pleasantly.

Raleigh, NC
2-19-2012

Redux

Two, a couple, two-pointer in a college basket-ball game -- two chimneys

on the brick Catholic Diocese, Two blues musicians, playing

guitar and harmonica (and is that the Holy Ghost!?), praise be to everything

good. In my neighborhood, two scuff marks on beige columns

and two pretty girls, who live next door and two

brown leaves left on the tree (winter be

damned!), lingering bravely above a telephone wire, which is connected

to a pole and the rest of the world too, and two, on and on

and on.

Raleigh, NC

2-18-2012

A Brand New Day

As the sun rises I eat

Cheerios by the window,

and next door the neighbor arrives

home from the night shift, working

as a nurse at the hospital

in the neonatal ward.

Raleigh, NC

2-6-2012