foam-flecked
prayer wheel moved
by thousand hands
of wet. monks croak

deep in their chests,
toss barley flour; fish
pause
nirvana
until the blade.

all the weight
of water; all all

Pinus ponderosa of the rosy woodflesh:
your butterscotch sap engulfs the edges
of a charred hole; your sweet trunk swells
around it, straining to bury the evidence.

The wooden floors used to bear
the scuff marks of Unitarian shoes.
Now it's some sort of hippy church,
covered with meditation rugs, just enough
'eastern influence' to placate well-fed,

When I was totally twelve
like my parents
took us camping, like
whatever, we hung out &
ohmygod, there were these
fish in the river. I think they
were trout, anyway
when I got in the water

cross-country champion, mutant, she
quit getting the shots, dropped out
of college when the hard womb knot
rocked her common sense

nine months and running
along the canal banks, dropped

What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? -- Richard Feynman

When I heard the learned poet

that horse would have heard me coming
a half-mile away. I'd be gunning down
the washboards, sending dust to meet

the ravens which ride thermals
on both sides of this ridge.

My lips remember
the river
even during drought.

***
A male vermilion
flycatcher
so red, my teeth hurt.

***
During the summer
algae bake
in damp spots near shore.

***

The heat pounds glossy hair
iron-flat; lungs gather dust
near the books, valley fever
in the fields. Students bend
their heads, earphones draped
& winking at the oblivious

It's a little awkward
when lanky foreigners approach
after the hiking club meets,
and ask if I discovered it.

Before history: pale women
gathered amber from sea-waves,
dreaming sticky forests
that lived upstream somewhere,
perhaps the Oder's source.
They did not think the river
was time. Women died

A manufactured house
blocks the road I'm on, sprawled
from the side street to the ditch,
all the way with no way
to get around. Except maybe
a maze of dirt
roads and some luck.

Mike's boat

is a messy looking thing,
sorta rough, half sailboat half
canoe. He made it himself and it works
beautifully. He floats it down
the Platte, the flat plains

The planetary scientists say that there were rivers
............................................ on Mars. Once
in the past, maybe water or silicon
carved its way into the soil, leaving channels

1.
Botanical minutemen
arm themselves and fight the exotic invasion.
Bufflegrass takes over the cactus forest
each year, more bunches
choke the natives.

2.