The travel brochure
called the place paradise:
sun, sand, pretty girls
not wearing much,
a name Gauguin embraced.
It is there I expect to find the dead,
who passed the pearly gates—
they sun themselves,
drink fruit juices, leave the cares
of a busy world behind,
and find love, again, though
it was never far from hand.
My father walks the tides
by the wharf, by the tall ships,
the small skiffs, the sails
white as billowed clouds.
IN A NORTHERN FIELD
I hear Deerkeeper raise the new moon
above Chicago, then Des Moines,
as he pulls it on a tether, like a kite,
like a dream laden cannel boat.
He pauses in the Rockies,
where the dark grass grows thick
under the trees, where the city sounds
do not reach the deer, the coyotes.
Deerkeeper pulls the moon full circle,
a latitudinal walk on a summer axis,
a favor for a friend down with a cold,
the sniffles, many aches and joint pains.
The deer remember to wear their quick eyes,
their wild eyes, the fast starts at the sound
of a twig snap or the paw prints as they
pad across the moonlit glade.
"OH, BABY. I LOVE YOU"
Delphi places her hands
inside the man's mouth,
stretches his cheeks, his lips
to better see the lie of his tongue
to determine if his words
come out straight
or twisted and coated
with peppermint
to cover up a bad smell.
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