Gravity

     lying here awake
  I hear a falling apple
     -it's tired hand let go

Green Giants

   needles, bark and cones
suit the giant sequoia
   - no flowers for them

Point of view

   swimming far below
minnows watch the floating geese
  - fishing boats with feet

Last job in Anaconda

Asphalt lanes follow the tracks

up past the old Indian school.

Steel rails sleep in their orange

stain of no trains and no ore

to feed Anaconda’s stack.

The tunneled mines of Butte were flooded

long ago and it drove this mighty

smelter cold. Its molten Friday wage

no longer flows nor pays the bills:

the furnace, dreams and workers gone,

their debts still pinned to its chest.

Nothing comes here now except

winter and its hungry Bighorn;

nothing stays here but the gritty

rainbowed puddles of melted snow.

The smokeless stack atop the slag

heap keeps its wearied watch.

The aged sexton tending to

the graves, yet to dig his final

plot and mark the job as done.

The money days are lost,

the work and families shorn.

Tonight’s clean-faces buying

the tavern beer will never hang

along these walls of smelted glory.

The only lights in town flash:

Sheep

                                      

On the Road

                                    

Drive Slow

The Big Top

Dallas is dark and almost still, 
trying to stay asleep.
I have never been here at 4am 
wheeling down this empty highway, 
it feels I'm somewhere
more Midwestern and 1950's.

The greatest show on earth has quit
the town it seems. A weary circus stuffed
its costumed dogs and pacing lions, 
acrobats and even the tiny car full
of clowns back into their crates
and trunks and bright railcars; 
the wheels turn to leave.

The loud red Barnum and Bailey 
signs silently mouth to me, 
“We hope you come next year.”

My eyes nod to each silver car 
unconsciously in search of 
a giraffe head or two poking through
the roof, a dangled elephant trunk,
or the bearded lady brushing
out her wavy hair.

Abandoning these tracks,
this lost Edward Hopper scene
rolls away to somewhere else. 
A clown face finishes his cigarette, 
flicks it out the window
and resumes his pose.