National Poetry Month: Two Poems

VEGAS WINTER

Across the faded screen of my dollar tree sunglasses,
it is broad daylight 
                         and a great-tailed grackle inspects
the property for unruly tenants and their unruly dogs,
its gait, purposeful and devoted.	     Around,
the umbrellas once hastily put together 
have begun to rust,
                         by January, their feet touch dirt
and seeds bursting open.	The swimming pool
with nowhere to go has sunk into itself, become now
a repository of branches and brambles.
This is how it begins: 
     at the corner of the unending – a small whisper,
          the horizon of sight bent towards gaze, 
yet –  the land’s will, unyielding. First,
the growing rustle of palm leaves, blade upon blade, 
in unison, then, 
with its uproar, the whole desert awake. 
I have been standing still 
so that my body might 
                         pin me to the fence and erupt – 

***

FIT OUR VISION TO THE DARK

Only my shadow is real: 	
                      upon its shoal, waves bend and break.
No need to write an argument for shade – 
the darkness that shields 	akin to the light that reveals.
I am part one thing part another
			the way a warbler, on a branch,
is a trapeze artist.  A shadow is only half the event,
there’s the question of 
                       ignition and observer,	of distance and dissolve.
In its life, often, a creature alights only half the light.	O lightning bug – 
I tie the five strings of my senses to your being,
                      do not let me down.