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I want to take a trip to meet you
In a cool London park under trees,
And sit
Beneath the sun with our books
On a blanket. My head in your lap,
Tickling your ankle.
Run your fingers through my hair,
Please.
Teach me everything that life has taught.
Soak up my scant knowledge like a sponge.
You show me your Lisbon and I,
I will show you my London.

Writer's Block

He read a poem about his mother,
moving me enough to walk over to him after the reading was over,
but the words I wanted to say condensed
and sat cold and slippery on the hand
I offered him.
I wanted to tell him that his words were
beautiful enough to copy into my quote book,
one of my favorite things,
a selective selection. I wanted to ask him
how I could make someone's quote book--
how to write something that wasn't what one
of my professors calls a "burp poem,"
a regurgitation of youthful hormones
stuffed in thin, plastic bags,
overflowing like the dumpsters of beer cans
behind the row, smelling just as foul.
There are poems in my toes, at the bottom of
my feet; each day they flatten,
crushed under my weight, molding to my
instep . . . never making it to my fingers.

Spring

If spring were a woman,
she would be arrayed in yellow and blue and red,
not the colors of daffodils and hyacinths and irises,
but blue for waning winter days,
the yellow of daylight savings time,
and the angry red of stormy skies.

Her scent would be the fresh-ploughed earth,
her breath the breeze of melting snow,
and in her eyes of heavy clouds
would be the promise of verdant fields.

If spring were a woman,
she would be a gifted woman, indeed!

The Dry Land

A soft comfort on a cold bus
and Arizona passes me by.
The fake desert of cow-grass and brown
misleads from the sky.
Abandoned hills give home
to the sunset of sweet orange
and an indescribable glow
to which I am now so much closer.
The canyon in its grandeur
truly is a mystic;
an overwhelming beast
not tangible, touchable,
but there just the same.
And Sedona with her red Earth,
pushed upward toward the sky
shows in all her glory
how Mother Nature is kind

Ave de Champ Elysees, Late Summer, 1999

Hemingway has gone away
and taken Paris with him.

I'd walked the streets for days and found
nothing
--save the absolute perfect croissant
with chocolate studs like jewels--
that could convince me I was in
an old world den of culture.

I went to McDonald's to see if they really
called them
Royales with cheese.
They did,
but that joke wore thin on Mickey D's #43
as I sat out front drinking coffee
in the lengthening shadow of glory
and triumph.