Every night it's the same

The warehouses
pour out their own
at five o'clock.
They cross train tracks
with smoke plumes coming
out of cracked windows.
Radios syncronize
for a short while
as the weight of daytime
lifts and shoulders lift
and the eyes get focus
on everything but the herons
perched on the riverbed waiting
for the quiet to start.

The Prize

What will we do tonight
on the edge of the cracked shrub-steppe?
We can go around green mounds,
in between them are canyons,
we'll lay bare our options to the unfolding
storm clouds.

The river was invited across baslt layers,
each one pushing until it couldn't.
Land waits.
No one I know cares to push their feet in to
the mix of sagebrush and grasses like I do.

You know it's not ending
in the stilted shadows across
great plains, and you know it
won't end in the desert-cold nights.
The farm lands have all faded in to
the deepest of memories and I'm
left with a lantern to fade with
the dusk.

Milton-Freewater

Every tiny moment
increased until it was
a real day.
The foreign sounds,
the backwards trails,
the pack of trees standing guard
on the edge of untouched forest life.

Black ink trails
lay through the state
vein-like and I can't
find a map to save my goddamn life.

Everyday we'll get off this
Greyhound racing dog
only to find ourselves in places
like Arco and Hermiston.
I could have stayed on and
slept through the leg-stretch
opportunity, but I never do.
I'm interested in how the air
here is like breath on glass.

Could it be
that I only see
a burning moon and stars,
illuminating cars
for the people who never sleep?

The right wing have discovered recycling! Fear recycling.

Good Work

There's loose papers scattered around our feet and
It's our harbinger to ignore,
'cause we don't need no dailies
to tell us what we already know.
We're lucky to have good work to do.

There is mud on our shoes,
cramped fingers to extend,
the hum of a thousand light switches all turned on at once.
Twilight fabric extends over the Cascades,
a slow wake up for us to travel on twisted black ribbons
because there's good work to do and we do it.

The Things You Learn

There's a lonely fact
you learn fast and hard
when you live in an empty state.
To dream of dropping off the coast
the way a rock might if it were thrown hard.
It's a dance you do when you turn from side to side,
looking east and west.
East is a comforter.
You cover up with trees
and hills and imagine forever in a horizon being pulled from
your finger tips. You think you want to smell fish and
salt and anything that's not dust settling on a fence.

It's a lonely fact
that you learn real slow
when you move west. There's always
dust on your back, the sound wind makes
through rocks and passes and the roads that brought
you here. Can you ever sing what it's like to smell rain in the desert?
Could you paint a night canopy over the lighted night sky?

Let me do this movement with you. Our east to west dance between
dust and mud, and a changing night sky.

Cold on my neck

The spring set.
Grass ways.
A lemon spring cucumber
sprung from the side yard,

I could hear crying in the bus tunnels this morning.

One-ninety-four straight south.
She was holding on to his arm,
the same one gripping a suitcase.

A part of you swept through the bus tunnel this morning.

The grip of Union,
Pioneer and King Street couldn't hold it.

Have patience.

With much banter, it is quite beautiful.

So long, Ron.