the hawk is high over the mesa and I am almost there I taste the river wind on my tongue one more climb and then down and down and I will see the river no SUVS yet no guns and hats those hats and shades they wear so cool they think not Cool Hand Luke not cool ese no coyote ahead of me no puma or jaguar or wolverine my head is light and my feet lift higher and higher I see a river now and mountains les montagnes where did they come from? un gato negro no un chat noir and vineyards and a man on a burro in Catalan I am in Perpignan and people smile at me my skin like olives in their orchard they offer me vin and comfort my legs so tired I have walked many days from Saltillo to Monclova to Piedras Negras I have walked and walked and no coyote only dust and wind and the scent of the river if I am lucky this time the SUVs will be like el fantasma I dream of when I reach the low flat water that turns brown and murky and invites me to the other side

What’s the Havana weather forecast I ask, waiting for the chicken parts to fry, crispy and brown, waiting for the sun to reach that point in a northern sky when all I can think about is heading south where mint grows in a fat clump by the side of the road that leads to the path that ends at the door of the little pink house where she is called Juanita or Esperanza Yes, I like Esperanza with the shimmering eyes, lazy walk and large, though not unpleasing thighs Maybe it’s the thighs that are shimmering and the eyes liquid and wild like the eyes of a tarpon riding high just ahead of the bobbing line I have heard people speak of the light that spills over the wall on the road that travels the length of the MalecÛn, a white light some say, deeply smeared with red and orange when the sun beats its chest and plunges over the seawall, or does it rise over that wall in a flash of lilac and puce†† Come with me to this place now restricted from our eyes to see, but so close – a plane ride, a stop, another short hop and we can be there watching the sun rise and fall, the chickens run and cook, the children, women and men finding shade where palm trees grow

She flies down the gutter on her belly, head high, bright red sleeve frayed and snarling at the wind. This is not a game, but a chance encounter with a remarkable ending. She is barely injured, a tear in the flesh of her forearm, cracked bone. It will mend easily as the red sleeve. I carry her unaware of eighty-five pounds in my two arms to a rickety slip where a man in a Redskins cap jauntily tilted back off his wide forehead greets us, directs me to a cabin where she will rest while he steers this ancient Chris Craft over the tumbling water of Puget Sound. I know his voice, the tone, the way he says he she. I think of his last book of poems, sharing pages with Chekhov, of his last ten years - Pure Gravy, he said. And don't forget it. From this momentary earthly interlude, he will soon return to the infinite writing retreat in the sky with Fante, Bukowski, Breece D'J Pancake -- to name a few.

when you have been bad you sit on the small aluminum chair inside the closet with the low green Balinese frog by your side to hold a glass of wine if you haven’t been that bad or maybe it is when you are good that the chair beckons the frog, the glass of wine all the same city lights twinkle on the bay quixotic like a gaggle of stars in a Broadway play it is a clear night after a week of rain and I think of tomorrow and what the sun might bring

First the evening news then the music no body bags on NPR just numbers names small towns with apple pie hot coffee and the smell of freshly mowed hay In which little villages are social justice and freedom living today I wonder as I listen to Cheryl Wheeler sing “If it were up to me” It was in the Globe her words from that song with pictures of caskets lined in perfect rows a flag draped perfectly over each casket in each row I have lived five decades of war Korea Southeast Asia The Gulf Kosovo Bosnia Serbia Rwanda Congo Rhodesia Somalia South Africa Chechnya Palestine where the olive trees grow and there are more I am looking for Abbey Road I am looking for a sunspot behind the hair trigger instead I see small children with bandoliers young women wired not for sound old men with long gray beards dressed in dark robes talk in dulcet tones of the vengeance of the sword Streets in Kandahar Baghdad Kabul Basra reek of shit and piss and the belch of buses fills the air Pre emptive strikes oil confiscation subsidized contractors and foreign military on every corner won’t make their flowers grow The buses of my youth were filled with laughter and nonchalance that was a long time ago Three years ago I watched a young man fall ninety-seven floors

No tattoos visible thirty feet away on the arms and chest of the middle-aged man moving easily in and out of the water, a slightly built young woman beside him. Her long blond hair lifts into the wind when she raises pale arms high, back flips into the waves. He dives shallow, whirling like a dervish into a cocoon, then flat on his back alongside her. At that moment, my twelve-year-old yells - "Look!" for me to watch her do a lazy crawl, then a breaststroke, followed by a butterfly and a long, clean freestyle through choppy waves as the tide pumps thick froth onto the shore. On the way out, he sees me walking with my cane - "You ok?" he asks. I glance his way. "Are you okay? I mean your leg, is everything ok?" "Fine," I say, "and how about you?" "What a day," he says. "Here we are two dads with their daughters at the beach. What a miracle kind of day." When my daughter and I get to the car, she asks, "What was that all about?" "Danang," I say, "or Khe Sanh or the road that ran the Parrot's Beak."

After the deluge – the quietude the reflection the depression followed by future planning Future? Yes I live in a blue state I’ve always lived in blue states My pockets filled with an overwhelming belief in the good found in mankind I live on a border I’ve always lived on a border I know why we gravitate to borders Edges make sense Edges I used to live on the edge We called it experiencing life Today it is called substance abuse antisocial behavior lacking in moral values not fitting in with the norm I never found a norm I could believe in When push leads to shove and it usually does the good guys get an ass kicking and the bad guys… I have this deep-seated feeling that when all is said and done when the rubber smacks the highway when the kitchen burner pops the griddle these guys with all the smiles and self-congratulatory styles will end up sleeping with their own home-made version of Laura Bush imagining Marilyn skirt billowing in the Seven Year Itch a cutting edge from their throbbing dicks.

The line is serpentine, weaving in and out of stacks of crates, between thick metal poles, beside wooden and metal chairs, dusty and bent in the limelight of this great dull room. I see women mostly, though I do see a man in a woolen greatcoat wearing a pointed black cap slouching low between the colorfully dyed headscarves of two rotund women. It is market day in KrakÛw. Most of these people have no idea what they will find at the end of the line. They know it is a shipment of something they haven’t seen or used or smelled or tasted in a very long time. I am in East Berlin on another day, another grey market day with a few items piled haphazardly on scattered tables – girdles and other undergarments of a nondescript style, in a large grey cement building, windows grimy and closed, what light there is chugs out of a few bulbs dangling low over the empty metal chairs, the dusty wooden stalls. The long meandering line of women and a few men creeps forward toward a starkly lit table against a far wall. I can’t see what is on the table. I do see a large plastic bag hanging high up ahead. As the women pass by, they pull on a string and tampons fly out of the bag in a long white row like a flock of tiny birds in an avian parade. They count off a number and clip the string with a pair of rusty scissors, plop the tiny birds into their bags and continue toward that distant table filled with rows, I now see, of round green bowls. Later walking through a park, I stop in front of a large shit stained bronze statue of a man riding a horse, sword drawn, eyes pointed dead ahead. A light rain begins to fall. A scholarly looking man of maybe fifty-two approaches me, “American,” he asks. I nod and he points his T-top blackthorn walking stick toward an iridescent-winged blackbird stone cold on the damp walkway. He points to the part where the tail feathers grow, sleek and dark, “uropygium,” he says and walks away.

Seventeen years without a boyfriend When you call you say "my boyfriend" as naturally "as what’s for dinner" or "ok ready for some new music" So familiar having the boyfriend or having a male who is now the boyfriend Drama follows this epiphany On your last visit late night calls "he said she said" cigarettes and double fisted cookies On the second night we look at old photos school papers the letters I sent when you were four five up to eight years old two hundred and fifty four miles away A pile of letters sent back to me by your mother "I never saw these" you say I have a hard time believing that I have a hard time not believing that I pour us each another tall glass of Orangina and we listen to the new CD you brought just for me to hear