The agave waits one hundred years to bloom, sits
on a mountainside, in a basement, by the door of a tunnel
that starts next to a thoughtful life and ends up in a desert
of rocks and wind and music and every color you can imagine.

The agave waits and other flowers perform the tasks at hand,
come knee-deep in summer or full and flowing in late fall.
We take their hands and plant them, like children, next to our hearts
and they grow in ways we never dreamed of.

The agave waits for a lifetime, if needed, spine and spire, dust and dirt,
all we've given up and all we've saved for the ages, a little magic
a lot of hard work, a few droopy arms that reached out when maybe
all seemed lost and the way was not certain - a friend, in other words.

A friend waiting beside a mountain of agave, a valley of recurring songs,
a broad plain of nothing but roots and gravel and careful weeds, some of which
may have a future here - a hundred days, a hundred years, the difference not so clear
but the names as common as our own breath

The agave waits one hundred years to bloom, or to die
whichever comes first, thrust into this life a pauper on a hillside,
a guardian of a simple way of life, a manifest of patience and joy
and their companion - unending sorrow. Rise up slowly, now

Let the poppies and primrose sweep the meadows like spring rain,
let the stalks of larksur and goldenrod show the way,
let the blue-eyed grasses and the prairie phlox become the reason that
the agave waits one hundred years to bloom.



.

Here I bless the four direction as if they were family:

North held fast by Polaris like a bookmark in the story of ice
and imperfect light.

South the first corner of life held to the task of both beauty
and sustenance.

East the brother who sees all first and knows which shadow will
or will not be cast.

West the entrance to the temple of night, the celebration
of a days work.

In return, the whole sky blesses us as we sleep, as we shiver,
as we howl, as we try and fail to escape, as we wander not sure of
our names but alive with our promise, as we place with fragile hands
the roots beneath the earth, as we search in amazement for that which
brings us life and food and joy, as we offer up these frail bodies for the task
at hand, as we cry for everything lost as we wait it's return, as we walk along the
river of our contentment, as we stand in the places that bring us strength, as we
take and hold the hands of the parents we're losing, of the children that still need us,
of the cold, clear, star-packed, comet-filled, song-laden sky that both loves and fills us.

I awake and find that it's not a dream.



.

Taken from the horizon and scattered
across the great state of Texas
these bluebonnets have made it all these years
somehow, without me, I show up once

And they burst into blue flame
with a paintbrush heart, a primrose blush
and a ten-gallon Stetson tight-pinch
the exact shape and size of the road headed south

A deep orange moon rises too late for contemplation,
the sky falls as overgrown with stars as the road with flowers
the hills breathe thick and warm with mesquite and pinon
The river whispers a song in the loving tongue

I can just make out a shape in the distance, it fades
then comes back, forms the shape of words with a wordless mouth
mimics the color blue with the wave of an arm, or a flap of the wing
then enters the kingdom as a wish, or a forgotten song

or just a footpath along a highway that leads out of town.
It brings only this to bear - one time to be here is just enough



.

This is not the Texas I have loved.
McMurtry tried to warn me about this
but I didn't listen, I stayed away from
her cities for the most part -
except for Austin in the eighties -
but that may not count.

I remember a jug of ice with lemon and scotch
and a poet now passed
and a sandbar in the late summer Brazos

I remember diving from the old mill in San Marcos
and traipsing the desert near Cotula
with prickly pear that towered over us

I remember the moment I lingered on the hill
above Barton Springs and my life fell
into a spring that may have no beginning

And so far - no end.

I remember crossing the Rio Bravo into the fierce land
that is Mexico and bringing back a simple understanding
of what language really is -

It is the way into the heart.

I remember that cool rain that swirled around those deep,
long vowels, I remember the comfort of sitting by the bank
with the air as heavy as the flow of the river

I remember that it is a comfort I still search for -
but I can't find it tonight, even in this full moon,
the air washed clean by last night's storm

All I can see is this empty heart






.

Here we are
in our borrowed shells
our ocean mortgaged at a good
fixed rate, we leave behind
buyers remorse, and take our solitude
to the bank



.

"The water is wide. I can't cross over."

There's moondust on the window ledge
the window is open, the moon is open,
the dust is as fine as an untold story

I'm leaning into the wind but I can't fall
gravity has started a payment plan
so that one day we will be square again

"And neither have I wings to fly"

I should learn to whisper in my advanced years
not come on so loud with either the truth
or the lies. Only speak up for emphasis.

Let's rotate the placement of a few crucial stars
trick a few ships into returning to port
bring a few wanderers home whether their time is up or not

"Give me a boat that can carry two"

I look across the way and see a light
it may just be a reflection of my own intention
but it follows me just the same

I rise up from hallowed ground, the rest of what I am
works it's way into the dust - travels to the moon and back
in just a heartbeat - and settles at my window ...

"And both shall row, my love and I"




.

Just breathing there, the air sculpted
By the slow measure of no voice singing,
By the green of a spring
Still only in memory

The years spent learning to sleep alone
Pile up like stones in front of a door that
Will not shift no matter how hard
the imagination wills it to,

No matter who the voice on the other side
Calls for when the snow cracks and the ice
Slides from above the town
where it has hovered for months

Faces come into focus,
You say: Is this my home or just a path?
Is this a hand to hold for comfort, for peace,
For silent nights with only the buzzing of air?

Or just an indication of the breadth of the night,
A tempering of the glass through which we find ourselves?
It does not matter that it came to me in a dream -
The road runs behind a wall of green light

The sky goes purple and the wind dies
There is a hush like leaves sleeping
There is a banquet of air and a bouquet of water
This is just a statue of the days remaining




.

The Earth swings away from winter tonight
drops those tiny kisses on our foreheads
and loosens up the rust from our frozen toes

It's just a lumbering beast that we're stuck
on the back of, we can't abide the passing of seasons
without his true and harmonious self

We just play the same record each time it comes around
turn it up full blast in the good parts, wander
back to the cave when it slips

I know I was here before, but I can't see any evidence
I really only showed up for the sex and the music and
everything else has been a bonus





tj

One year is not really like the others
proven again and again, water over stone
sun over ice, some even count backward
from the time they discovered immortal
consequence. Fire is not forgiving

Neither is blood nor semen, I cry
out for the long story about how
we got here. Did I take a wrong turn
somewhere? Is there an apocalypse
around here?

We can stoke the fire now all we want.
Bless the persistent vagabond and the
wayward soldier. Bless the wounds and
bless the wounded. I cry out but have
no rooms to hide in.

There is only smoke when I finally
open my eyes. I'm not sure what
all the fuss was about. I count the days
that I was lost but not the times
I said so. Is this a cave or

Is it a tunnel? Am I blind or does the light
just disappear as soon as I can find it?
I will crush between my fingers the herbs
that protect me, but I still waver
at the doorstep and wonder:

Is this where I came in? Is this the door
I bolted from the other side? Is there
anything left of what I started with? Is there
a light beyond these woods that might
somehow find me?

Winter lays her beauty all around us now.
The things I worship are frozen in time and space.
The herbs and shadows repair the damage
as well as possible. I glare at the winter sun
and dare it to complete this,

This saddle-worn journey from ages ago,
this little mockery of silent tongues, this music
I ply like firewood to a host of stars, real
and otherwise, I command this night to lay down

And it does, the path from fire to starlight
is real enough, the heavens intercede just long
enough to get their bearings then wander from
pillar to pillar of night's dreams

Just hear me out before my voice gets lost
Get what warmth you can from this late night fire.
Take your passion before the coin is tossed.
Toss your fate to my desire.





.

In Kansas, it's the wind that tells the story, a single hair
blowing across a face or an oak uprooted,
the face once kissed and the tree once a vantage point
from which to both hide from and conquer the single, simple
world as we know it.

Mexico sends her warriors reckless as young love
and just as persistent. A repayment for past wrongs?
Or just the currency of atomic displacement?
There is a movement in the bushes and everyone blinks.
There is silence and everyone hears.

Canada just drives a stake in our heart and is done with it.
No false kisses. No hand brushing the hair aside.
No moment when you start to linger, but change your mind.
This is the only planet whose gravity we can use to accelerate
the means of escape.

I'm combing out my mothers hair, something I've never done before.
Changing her socks, massaging her feet. Young love is done
for both of us, of course, but the wind persists. The Rockies still
shoot it to us like a fast-pitch softball, down, and out.
Nothing in the way but a barbed-wire fence and it's long gone.

But it's why people in the Midwest have a hard time leaving, getting
in the car to go watch the sunset, tracing the lightning glow in a room
where darkness has fought for hours, staking out a hilltop before a summer storm
can sweep across the sky, before the thunder can drown out the sound
of brushing that hair back across that face.

Not knowing when a poem should be over. Not breathing when love is crying out.
Not ascending the oak as it leaves the earth. Not dreaming when dreams
are all that make sense. Not carrying the comb and the socks around like a talisman.
Not waiting at the end of the sunset with an old chevy, beige over brown
to drive on down the hill and off to the sea.






tj