Published on: 1/21/2014
Saint Brendan, Becalmed, on the Hellas Sea

And in the midst
Of spiteful North Atlantic seas
Brendan bails his coracle
And prays for a sky that is not
Grey as a pigeon's wing
For an ocean that smiles
Under a butter yellow sun

And, of a sudden
The sky turns a dusty pink
And gentle waves,
Huge but never breaking
Like magnified ripples
Move the leather boat
Up and down
In front of a horizon
That is just too close
Lit by a sun
That is bright but small
Haloed by ice crystals
The air is thin and cold

To the south
The jagged crest of Amphitrite Patera,
Punches through the dusky crust
Like a fist

And tonight God
(If there is a God,
And He is listening)
Will hear praise from two planets

Published on: 9/13/2013
The Expatriate in Houston

Buildings suspended

In fifteen thousand feet

Of montmorillonitic clay

That go down almost as far

As they go up

Terrible, low center of gravity masses

Sprouting from a humid drainage ditch

And the city

Is spreading still

Crawling up and twining around

Freeways that snarl and snap

Against restraint

(And briefly I stop and wonder at

The cool curves of

A cloverleaf junction, the

Clarity of the concrete loops

Placed just so, neatly as in

The level design

Of a computer game)

Here there are

Vietnamese street signs

Halal taco trucks

Slabs of red-shifted darkness

Hanging on a chapel wall

Here there are

Impassive blondes
Driving blue-eyed cars
A smog stunted tree
Crammed with dark birds

Singing with rage

By a mirror glassed window

And the glass aches to be sand

And the sudden rain aches

To fall in a lagoon

And the ozone laced air aches

In the lungs of those

Chosen to wait

For a bus that may arrive

When the fossil crinoids

In the travertine facings

Reanimate and sway like lilies

In an invisible current

And in the brief twilight

Everything is drenched

In a deep azure

As if the day's events

Are winding down

At the bottom

Of a shallow ocean