Ledge

We:    How many have trekked onto you?
Her:    Thousands, not millions.
    At 10,000 feet the sun's winds
    chill under clouds.
    Warm rocks follow sound.
    What do you do at 10,000 feet?

We:    Think about women not shrinking fantasies,
    the same as at 2,000 feet or ground zero;
    piss at flashing 727s;
    siesta on granite and aspen phlox
    with cup-o-soup lunches;
    watch smog from L.A. and San Francisco
    two or three skies away;
    write this.

Her:    When your sons try
    to be smarter than anyone
    as if it were important,
    you can't show them feelings.
    Touch the rock skin.
    Put your hand into that rich rock.
    Up here everyone lives by nuclear waste;
    old look after young
    until the old are young
    then old look after young again.

We:    We remember a woman
    with dark sunglasses
    walking the beach
    seeing nothing.
Her:    Hear the sound of your feet crunching.

(solitary music) invites

solitary music) invites
Let me step here

where you’ve left one,
a music’s point completely filled with all is clear; where I do not need
species
        in a fragile space, because you have not found it or it’s
purpose — undiscovered, and
underutilized until you see
        some 7% carbarundum — more than a sky’s worth weighted unbalanced;
and look, another spec periods away to pace myself over you
    on and on
    through the sentence, carrying short lives and places
        to go         where I make the dance to
hedged city blocks and a creation jot in the few places to step
music over meaning, etc., but the dot
under my point, a molecule shadow,
soon to be you, takes heart’s music and awaits
the visionary tip
where the full world’s less
descends under politics, personal might
                and my
toddling steps and divided galaxies, ever wider,
proving relative infinity and lower spiral walls (some parts of people being
crusty        thank you, warm rain for sliding down the green musical shaft
                                    washing me),
but here’s another one, hypnotic as an eagle’s eye, aggression reflected — I who
cannot stare into eyes, but
    who can make myself the next mite, watching you
except when quite ecstatically here, the enclosed radiant note.

THE TALL DRUNK,
STUMBLING FROM ONE NICKLE TO THE NEXT,
STOPS TRAFFIC LIVING
ON DELIBERATION.