July sun
glitters like a yellow ice
cube,
Green radiance drowns the squash vines.
Wisteria broods
in its brown thirst.
Xeriscape
of beebalm and calamint;
horehound, hyssop, mullein,
and purple coneflower.
*
The day moves out,
reining a dark breeze
that stirs the rose leaves.
At dusk,
blood of mad rains in Embudo
Channel.
In the drowned light after the water,
the roses are quiet.
Arcturus rides in the thinning clouds.
*
Now in Virginia
rain on the kudzu and the pearly everlasting.
Black current of glimmering water,
Cats' eyes, chatoyant in the dark.
In Kyoto,
a leaf falls
from the hundred-branched
zelkova tree
and floats on the fish pond.
*
Far away, in some rainy meadow,
Thalia is blooming.
I dream its
long-stalked basal leaves,
its panicles of bracted
purple flowers.
And somewhere a river flows,
black as leopard-flower
seeds,
under the light of torches.
In sleep
I ride a long boat
on its onyx waters.