As scientists predicted, 

The axis of the world 

Reversed overnight. 

North became South, 

South North.

And you and I

Went falling

Into the moon. 

I am no scientist.

I have no solutions, 

Only a bitterness, 

Like tea that has been oversteeped,

Full of tannins

That stain my teeth, 

And leave my lips

Darkened.

But because I love you,

I am sending you

A little something 

To tide you over–

By snail mail, unfortunately.

Please be patient:

It should arrive in

3-4 business days. 

The first thing I am packing 

Is a psithurism–

The sound of wind soughing through 

The redwood trees, 

In that last summer

Before you were really

A woman. 

The second thing is

Light on still water,

Like so many minnows 

Darting in their diamond dance. 

I have taken it from Pillar Point:

The place around that old ship that has, 

Over many years 

And against all expectations, 

Entirely failed to sink. 

The third thing I am sending you

Is fire–a campfire dancing

From its windswept blue roots

To its effervescent golden manicure. 

I am sealing it all together 

With a very tight hug, 

The hardest hug I can give you

Without either of us breaking. 

I know

A hug is not enough

To bind 

Anyone

To the earth.

If gravity fails–

When gravity fails, 

It will be enough only

To hold you.

A New Year’s Resolution:

May my life be far less interesting 

Than these too interesting times. 

Big Basin, 2020: 

97%, 80,000 acres of forest,

Eclipsed by fire.

A sign remained standing. It read: 

The Amazing Ever-Living Redwood Tree!

Thank all the gods that never were

That my New Year’s Resolutions

Never come true.

That in spite of our good intentions

The world begins again,

Over and over

After each incendiary inundation. 

Now, the California everlastings 

Bloom their maple syrup scent. 

Banana slugs crawl

Over surreptitious roots.

And fungus sings 

In its mycelial rounds. 

And I–I resolve 

To make crepes

Just as soon as I can go

To the store

To buy

18 fresh brown eggs.

And I will eat the crepes

Very slowly, with a Suzette sauce, 

Or perhaps just Nutella.

And my friends will be there,

And my dog, too. 

Redwoods have long roots, you know–

100s of feet in every direction.

Bound to the earth, 

Bound to each other,

They stand tall

Without any resolutions

At all.

In sunless rooms she kept them:

Piecemeal corpses, all.

And each unlucky sap she trapped

She pickled, crown to soul.

She inventoried 

And itemized them:

Here the kneecap of a martyr,

Here an aspirant’s reaching hand,

Here a row of tongues torn from

The late-delivered damned.

Then one night, the dead rose up–

(Hers was no perfect science)

They stumbled backwards, hands entwined,

In malicious non-compliance. 

Then came the call 

For Weingarten Rites–

And soon the Seance,

And court hearing.

Then the spirits testified,

And so did she, 

Sneering.

The dead bore witness to her crimes;

The planchette leapt off its board from spelling.

The psychic scribe sprained her wrist 

Transcribing discorporated yelling.

“What a redundancy it would be,”

(Ruled the judge)

“To turn and strike you dead!

Why, if character is Fate, 

The curse is already said.

I’d return your evil thricefold

But that’s too cruel a fate.

After all you’ve heaped on others’ backs–

You’d crack beneath the weight.

Because I cannot curse you–

I’ll bind you, for these dead.

Before you ever command again– 

Dissect yourself, instead.”

I haven’t always been a frog. 

I was a man, once–

A good man,

A good enough man,

Okay, not precisely 

A prince. 

Then one day, 

The water rose, and lo–

The beginning, sad and slow,

Of my American Amphibian Horror Show.

HOUR 1:

I called the advice nurse. 

I said, “I have neon green atopic dermatitis.” 

“Maybe it’s stress?” she said.

HOUR 2:

I was referred to the dermatopathologist

For a full-body biopsy.

(I don’t recommend it.) 

I said, “Well, what about the webbed hands

And toes?”

He said, “Well, maybe you’re somatizing. 

Have you tried losing weight?”

HOUR 3: 

I was sent on to the transmogrification specialist 

For a consultation and some cursework.

I said, “I’ve got a case of submersion 

Come conversion–

I’ve got gill flaps 

Under my collar tabs.

I’ve got a rising water level, 

And a curse, a curse I’m certain

That if not circumvented shortly

Could put me in a hearse. 

Or–ribbit–a fate much… 

(swampier?)

Well. You know. Worse.”

And the transmogrification specialist said, 

“That’s what we do to frogs–

We put you under water.

You’ve just got an aversion to immersion–

Do you really mean to tell me

That even as you’re growing gills, 

You still can’t breathe?”

The water rose above my head.

My tongue went uncurling 

Unfurling, 

Then, deflated,

It lay still.

Now, I avoid bathtubs, altogether. 

I’m a shower man, through and through.

And, if nothing else,

Orthopedic oxblood brogues 

Really do hide webbed toes

Far better than they used to.

Where would I hide my heart, 

If I had one?

I could put it in the cupboard, 

But the grain moths would find it, 

And lay their eggs in it.

I could put it on the counter, 

But the fruit flies 

Would eat their fill.

It would rot in the fridge for certain – 

Behind the sugarfree Greek yogurt

Whose expiration date passed

Along with all of January’s good intentions.

One day, it would be discovered

By a shocked 

(Fine, an exceedingly

Unsurprised)

Housekeeper –

Or else it might be found

Far later,

By an archaeologist, 

Some thousand years hence,

Who would give it a name for its pains, 

And keep it

In a case of glass,

And show it, infrequently, 

At conferences. 

(Graduate students would submit 

Abstracts

On my heart. 

They would fill their resumes

With incorrect APA citations

Of their poster presentations

On my heart.)

By then, my heart will be 

Too delicate for travel.

It will need to be kept

In some dim back room 

of the Weltmuseum Wien,

And only ever viewed under

Vantablack’s Blackety Black light. 

(For special fundraising days,

They will, of course, display my heart 

Next to Montezuma’s crown

And the Pompeiian sourdough starter. 

Ill-funded postdoctoral scholars 

Will attend mandatory trainings

On the care and feeding of my heart.)

In the meantime,

I will put my heart,

(Such as it is,)

In the freezer, 

With the other meat.

There, it might

Safely keep –

Barring unexpected 

Power outages,

Or, of course – 

The summer heat. 

In the surrealist museum,
My name provides its own instruction:
As the clocks melt off the mantle pieces,
I fling open every doorway.

The garlic toasts itself,
The prosecco bleeds across tablecloths
Scattered with brow-beaten pearls.

Brief as the afternoon sun’s glimmer,
The little bird streaks
In and out
Of the banquet hall.
Behind it,
A half-remembered memory lies Gleaming.

(Did I mention, also,
The tumbling clementines
Strewn so very cornucopiously
Across indigo silk?)

I smear brie on crackling brioche,
And eat crumblingly, and
Keep one eye open.

Perhaps I am a half-eyed half-wit,
as you say.
But how else should I know, then,
when to stop licking my fingers?

The sun circles the dial,

Like some ophidian morning glory

Twining its way

Around a woman’s ankle –

Unshaved and unsunned,

Naively unsuspecting.

Already the crocus has withered.

First world swallowed by second world

In the cresting wave.

Out of the night terror darkness

Climbs the hollow green shoot

Of the paperwhite.

Dante holds Beatrice

In his mind’s eye only,

A radiance twice reflected

And half held.

And the sunflower wants – 

What?

To find what it follows,

To hold more than can be grasped

By wanting?

You could ask Freud, Wordsworth, or Mary Oliver –

But better to start, I think, 

with a well practiced horticulturist.

Not everyone gets to hold the moon.

You must sail very far to reach it, 

all the way to the Balcony of the Sky.

Then you must set down your ship of fog

by the Moonkeeper’s window.

“Come out,” you will say, your heart ticking–

a little like a timer, and a little like a bomb.

“It is time, dear friend, to call down the Moon.

For the night is sweet and bright–

and all about the Moon

are rings of haloed light–

But can it really be the Moon, by right, 

if we’re not there to hold it?”

Then out he’ll come, feral-faced,

socked and sandaled he shall greet thee,

his stubbled cheeks dripping dewdrops,

his disused voice a choking smoking carburetor.

He’ll press warm palms on mist-silvered glass

and through the melting doorways meet you.

Then, off you’ll go, and with a howling and a yowling, 

with tipped back faces and bared throats, 

you’ll cry out to the moon, 

AWOOOO, ARUUUUU,

(And so on and so forth, etc.–

it is only through such crude and unsubtle gestures 

that we, the denizens of these phantasmagoric lands,

may keep our housing prices low.)

Then down she’ll come, nearly hurtling,

dressed all in bone china, eggshells, & finest fishbone.

Do not fear, for you shall catch her–

and will swaddle her in your ship’s sails,

and hold her tender softness against your monstrous metronome,

and somehow

—the true miracle—

she will sleep soundly.

Behind you, the Moonkeeper will lean forward,

his whiskers quivering,

as you spitclean a bit of comet off the Moon’s cheek,

as you slowly inhale the gardenia-sweet scent

of her warm, pearlescent temples.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled panicking

to bring you this breaking news,

that He who sits upon the throne hath said, officially,

“Okay, Take 2, write this down, hold my drink,”

and unto his angels

hath given the following dictation:

“There shall be no new heaven and earth, 

no land and no sea, 

but one,

a single holy city:

a Sea of Roses. 

And in this place, there shall be 

no death, no mourning, no tears nor pain—

a world as thornless as Zephirine Drouhin,

cherry-pink,

and forever climbing.

To the thirsty, I will give water—

and by the thirsty, mostly I mean—

yes, you guessed it,

the roses.

Scrap the blueprints for the fiery lake; 

instead, let tightly packed pink and apricot-orange Portlandias

shoot like starbursts from the eyes of politicians.

Let snarls of rosa rugosa bury every barbed wire fence,

and from the mouth of every gun, 

let fire a fountain of Joseph’s Coat, 

glowing like a lava fall.

Let the asphalt of every shopping mall crack, crumble, and collapse,

gulped down, devoured by Double Delights.

[burp]

Let all of existence finally be 

one single Fragrant Cloud.

If the world is a wedding, well, then,

cover the Arc de Triomphe in Beau Narcisse and Rosa Mundi.

Think less about the bride and groom, 

and more about

the Earth’s bouquet—

and the dew-specked, blue-violet gleaming 

of my Twilight Zone corsage.

Lawns are for fools and cowards. 

That’s what I say. And maybe you disagree—

maybe you are not as Californian as I am.

Maybe you have not seen the Earth split

like lips too chapped for bleeding, 

have not watched the sky glow

like a Martian sunrise.

I say, let all the lawns die—

it’s the grass or us, or perhaps

it’s only the grass or me.

Me, and the red and white salvia (“Hot Lips,” indeed).

Me, and the dusty yellow yarrow.

Me, and the firm blue spires of the catmint.

Only me—and all the other messy, hardy plants

who put down roots in the earth’s wounds. 

Tonight, I am the bachelor’s button whose sunny blue

the summer has not yet diminished. 

I am the scarlet flax, 

brilliant as a solar flare.

No weeping pansy, me, tonight I

am the Corsican violet,

indomitable, intransigent and unyielding. 

I am each of these (incomprehensible) wildflowers 

who, even if she be parched,

will still sing out 

to the milk-throned monarch,

to the gold-winged swallowtail,

even to the hummingbird, with his opal-feathered heart:

Come, my love.

Draw nearer.