snow devils

she lived in the mountains of Colorado for the winter
and her skis did a lot of talking.
between runs there was coffee
and a warm fire,
and any conversation quickly heated up
from the front side.
to me she gave a huge sigh and said
"of course you may join me"
but i was under temporary arrest after taking a shower
with a soapy stranger in the hallway room
where the overhead fan when turned on made a noise.
you know the place.
once i escaped, i noticed that she had a large Picasso hanging over
her fireplace which was crooked.
the artist would have enjoyed the irony.
like people, paintings are better seen when they
are out of place.
and i learned to ski later in life, probably i'd say
i was 40 and afraid on the bunny slopes.
elementary aged girls gave me suggestions and
then turned down slope with a grace that seemed
subversive to my envious eyes.
coffee or not, what makes a great day is one
that you fashion yourself.
i often thought about moving to Colorado in the spring
of 1926 when i told everyone to move west.
"move west," i often said.
there are skeletons in the mountains there,
and snow devils,
and it is such fun to touch the sky.

A Clear Mountain Stream

there are multitudes of
brown leaves on a broken creek.
it's the season of Christmas,
and the snow is dirty white against a red background
Inside, a smoking seamstress is stitching
together a picture of lonely people
with no one particularly in mind;
the infrequent source of the next twenty years,
the clear mountain stream,
is flowing all the way from Never Never Land
where the lost boys live
looking for their marbles,
as she sits across the street with her
sewing machine
treadling away rhythmically.
underneath a persistent sun,
warming shadows
and in the dead of night,
a bicycle and a rocking horse
and a man wearing a black mask.
a plaster cast sits near her open window,
a small part of a still life
switched at birth
in the famous maternity ward where
everyone who enters is registered as a guest
from dawn to dusk
and in between all the parts and participles of time.
the crisis confronting her is
accurately identifying everything she pieces together:
a solitary figure is represented as an all-important foot
placed next to a seated man whos' grey beard is reading
a fairy-tale story about a goblin
underneath a bridge
with an unending line of zeros and ones
erupting from his mouth.
but one cannot be entirely sure
because everything is barely discernible.
a blond and a brunette and probably a mistress,
periodically opening the door
to a wallpapered wall,
found enough ideas for a lifetime,
which is the utmost limit of our time on Earth.
her sewing machine continued to thread a needle
while the mountain stream preserved memories which
sparkled in the sunlight.