Thunder With Wine

Watching from my front porch,

enjoying a glass of Syrah,

an afternoon storm from the west 

crawls over the Huachuca Mountains,

appearing friendly and seemingly laid back.

Then surging over, gaining strength,

down the mountain like an avalanche,

ominous, dark blue-gray,

covering the eastern slopes

with clouds and sheets of rain.

It’s filled with amazing

and dangerous fragrances,

earthy and ancient, 

the decayed and the living.

The jagged wow of lightning

cuts loose the blast of thunder

that lurches ahead of the storm,

rumbling over everything toward me,

awaiting its thudding arrival,

to see the ripples in my wine,

to feel with Earth its visceral,

percussive boom, 

all the way to my bones.

From: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 23

The How of the Storms

Childhood Summers

It couldn’t just rain in Willcox— 

a mass of grit and silt blown from the Playa

had to fill the air, teasing everyone

with the odor of wet dirt.

How odd that we could say it smelled good

while tons of the stuff blew

through town at forty miles an hour.

The onerous grit infiltrated

windows and doors,

adhered to our teeth,

filled our noses and ears,

and coated our game boards with an annoying 

layer of silt.

The wind howled like

the O’Connor’s blood hounds released for the hunt;

barb’ wire fences glowed and crackled with static electricity.

Lightning, as if hammered off Thor’s anvil, 

careened straight down through a furious sky, 

crashing into Earth in a blinding flash,

letting loose window rattling thunder,

sometimes so close we ducked. 

Then it would rain.

From: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 26

Fire, Passion, and Stairways to Heaven

Ask a question any way you want.

The truth of the answer it won’t change.

Could the answers change the questions

into some other grammatical form or language?

Some day I will reach a place of Knowing nothing.

I’m wondering if invisible I will be. Or just older?

Better you’re transformed into the fullness of a symphony

with lots of brass, with a conductor with strong arms,

swamped by sound, swamped by the sound of love, 

by loving the harmonies, the chord progressions,

digressions, compressions, suggestions, avoiding the

false prophets and easy answers to abstract questions,

but what pain they will bring us, who knows, 

when our kisses fail to rise above simple disguises,

kisses of no fire, no passions, no stairways to heaven.

Answer from fullness, not from emptiness.

Answer in full voice, sing in full harmony.

From: Buckle Up! A Boomer’s Meandering Musings on

Innocence, Time, and Love, From Then to More Recently

Unpub. MS p. 7

At My Age

August 2022

73 years 6 months

In my pretentious sophistication,

at twenty-two, I watched A Clockwork Orange.

I unraveled in ways I didn’t know existed, 

but pretended otherwise.

Deeply shaken, I thought the world had shifted,

that something had died, 

that something malevolent was coming.

I vomited that night.

Innocence is gone.

Age does that, a little here, a little there.

So do books and broken toys,

and those special toys spirited away

by our mothers when we weren’t looking;

the news, frustrations, and betrayals by 

parents who should have loved their children

without question, without abuse.

Lest I become a resentful old man, 

I must forgive them every day.

There was innocence and wonder 

and imagination, then a need for comfort in an 

uncomfortable world, a longing for something 

of past good feelings seen through the lens 

of life’s experiences, craving meaning 

and connection, a Calling from the Wilderness.

At sixty-three, I entered one path

that opened into wonder, gazing 

at the Milky Way or standing in awe 

of nature’s primitive and beautiful places

and terrifying forces; and another 

into the journey seeking the Divine, 

the ultimate of the Sacred Mystery.

Walked simultaneously, 

in and out of shadow and light, 

with both love and suffering,

twisting, overlapping, merging together

until now, at this place, I arrived

better than I was yesterday.

From: A Preface to the Universe: Love, Nature,

& The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p. 19

Old Roads

to the love that should have been

Many old roads,

beaten and pot-holed, I have

traveled in silence unaware.

Year by year I have slowly learned 

to listen to my heartbeats.

Your wondrous touch 

and heartbeat caught me off guard.

You became a mysterious map

to some curious byways.

I was asked if I feared

disclosing my vulnerabilities.

Not any more, but a friend has told me,

If you get lost, don’t ask for directions.

The Master Poet said that love

emptied of things is the greatest love.

I admit to you my greatest fear:

the loss of the work of our hearts.

You have a marvelous way of seeing.

The curious byways persist just so.

If again our lips should come together,

if our tongues soften and our eyes shimmer,

the old roads would be made smooth again,

and they would be our new way home.

From: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 13

Things Close By

A Reverie

Sunset glares through a slit in the clouds;

cool air descends with childhood memories

of horses and rain in Willcox. 

Horses knew things.

They knew more about wind, rain, and trouble

than any of the rest of us.

They helped me to many places 

that were kindred to my nature,

to escape the oppressing forces,

to wander in the dreams of silent places

where kindness flourished.

There were no maps for any of that,

but we may have known each other 

before time had its measure.

It’s windy this evening on the borderland,

and rain approaches from the southeast.

I opened a lovely Malbec to sip slowly

and relax while the storm treked across 

a darkly veiled sky. Its mesmerizing fragrance

mingled with the aroma of virga that fell 

from clouds of dreams and memories.

The horses knew about all that.

Sometimes we knew.

Look now. 

Rain is close by.

From: A Preface to the Universe: Love, Nature,

& The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p. 32

There Was This

2026

Fifty-nine years ago I was eighteen.

I remember that like it was just

fifty-nine years ago.

I was a high school graduate

washing dishes in a nursing home,

wondering, What about my life?

And today, for everything I can remember,

there are gaps before and after.

Memories stumble over empty spaces,

and dreams mingle with memories.

Which is which?

To my knowledge that’s nothing new.

I conjured plausibles to fill the gaps,

but that was never satisfying.

They are not lies, but not quite the truth.

It was merely a convenience

to avoid tripping through a story.

Since I’m past seventy, it’s easier to say 

that I don’t remember this or that

and I’m okay to let it go.

No one seems to mind.

From: Ponder: Dreams, Memories,

and the Imagination

Unpub. MS p. 26

Inside Out

In every person’s eyes,

where all geography is dismantled,

what rests is never a matter of simple silence.

Inescapable tragedies and betrayals, 

and desires for revenge

are never worth that kind of effort.

Our vision is softened

by the migration of gentle shadows,

lovers’ whispers, babies’ laughter,

and friendships that lift us effortlessly.

Things seen and unseen,

rainfall and lightning,

births and deaths,

the transit of Orion,

the passage of time,

and doors opening to the sacred

all have their own pulse,

their own resonance and coherence,

and their own music that sings

of starry-starry brilliance.

From: Memories of Things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 23

A Wilding Dream

Yellow seasons, red clouds,

drinkable dawns and wine— 

we certainly indulged.

Then an orchestra,

sprawling, treacherous, and lavish

with wilding percussion,

rainy brass, nervous strings,

and chatty woodwinds.

A growing dissonance of voices

on top of the deep roar of traffic

and sirens, a scream for help,

the crash of cymbals, bossy and jagged,

tumbling down concrete stairwells,

cutting through all things fearful,

then quiet but for the breezes sighing

through the barb’ wire fences

and over the range grasses.

In the discomfort of chaos,

another glass of Syrah, 

a Brahms symphony,

and a found book of Psalms.

From: Ponder: Dreams, Memories, 

and the Imagination

Unpub. MS p. 47

Something Or Other

I am not a lunatic but madness might be a factor.

Do we wait for a savior, or bring one into existence?

Music resonates in consonance with the creator’s voice.

What isn’t transformed by fire is eaten by envy.

Many Boomers couldn’t get enough of the world;

everything opened, everything poured in, then too much.

One day, several years ago, I realized everything had changed.

Inner voices were unhinged by my confusion. Ageing does that.

Innocence has become more important as I have gotten older.

And I have wondered if idealism is another form of innocence.

Little by little, while on the road, a new voice

emerged that I came to recognize as my own;

the extraneous bits of life fell away.

There is no language for that,

only the surge of the soul 

and the swelling of the heart.

from: Buckle Up! A Boomer’s Meandering Musings on

Innocence, Time, and Love, From Then to More Recently

Unpub. MS p. 39

Blue Horses

Inspired by Mary Oliver

Now and then,

when a human event intercedes,

what seems necessary is not necessarily so.

Betrayed by a lover, poetics seem a ramblescat,

a mere caption, phony, like, who would want to know?

In a near wilderness where Blue horses, 

out from colorful dreams, 

are messengers from another world,

their watery movements and desert patience

have brought solace and taken me on quiet rides

while the grassland is softly sensuous

and I awaken.

from: Ponder: Dreams, Memories,

and the Imagination

Unpub. MS p. 31

On Knowing Nothing

I know that I know nothing.   

                        ~Socrates

It’s easy to walk into this,

a swirling mist,

and remember the stories

of no words, from the beginning,

the ones no one could tell us.

It’s the realm of the Great Unknowing,

of wordlessness and silence,

where mythic truths come to us

to reside in our hearts,

notoriously and sensuously,

intangibly and mystically.

We are nearly perfect here,

remembering a world

that was the impulse of wonder

and imagination, 

living from our hearts,

breathing the wilderness

where nothing is explained 

but somehow known,

where fragrances are seen,

flavors are heard,

but our tears will remain salty.

from: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 4

What I Mean to Say

One afternoon in therapy

Eternally emerging,

from what I was 

into what, I don’t know.

There were times I thought I knew.

Then there were times I thought I knew nothing,

but actually did know something.

Some days it was ‘Yes.’

Other days ‘No.’

And other days, ‘Maybe.’

Contradiction.

Paradox.

Unsettled.

Nothing gone from ourselves

is gone forever.

Knowing too much?  Oh sure.

What do I lack?  Nothing but that ‘one thing’

(I thought I would find it in The Moody Blues).

Or do I have too much of one thing,

not enough of another?

I have a reservoir of love, sure,

everyone says so.

(Who cares what everyone says, right?)

Or are they full of crap?

Tomorrow I’ll see a world differently,

or a different world,

small as they both are.

As always, there is tomorrow.

from: After All the Years of Gravity

Unpub. MS p. 3

Notes to a Man

Do you remember the first time

you realized the world was new,

when words had their places?

They didn’t always 

work the way you wanted them to.

When others used the same words,

you were disappointed,

but you learned to use them to leap 

into clouds of the unknown.

And remember your first truly passionate kiss?

The one that made your body vibrate,

closed your eyes, sapped your strength,

weakened your knees.

Your body became a furnace,

your sanity became chaotic,

the crackling madness of love 

made a strange kind of sense.

When you saw the world

through the eager eyes of your children,

through their questions and wonder,

through their gestures of offering you water,

you realized everything has its purity,

old and new, coming and going,

a colorful world after all,

and that you were an ordinary man

blessed by an intangible mystery

that made you something more 

than you would have ever expected.

from: A Preface to the Universe:

Love, Nature, & The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p. 9

Good Men

When I turned sixty-three,

memories of such things visceral, 

prickly barbed, smelling of sweet,

sweaty landscapes, unvoiced,

still clamorous of families and children

strewn within my bones,

my head and teeth, and in the iron 

of my blood, unseen, but certainly felt.

Then the unpacking.

Sometimes a reminder, a trigger,

the snap, and we wonder, 

What if…? or Why this...?

Where on earth were we going

with all those things, 

with all those attitudes?

Was it somewhere 

beyond everything littered here?

It’s a new thing this age.

We cannot minimize 

the truth and sadness of the things 

and people we left behind.

When men have learned

finally how things work,

how to live with the notion of our

sensitive male ego,

how to talk with our eyes,

how life should be lived,

how we understand mercy, humility, 

and a little something about women,

we realized fully the pain of achieving wisdom,

our souls laid vulnerable to the vast unknown.

from: A Preface to the Universe:

Love, Nature, & The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p.5

Old Juan

A painting by Wood Woolsey (1930)

Phoenix Art Museum

Phoenix, Arizona

You have had your time in the sun.

Your hands, stiffened by hard work, 

are now at ease on your lap.

A cane helps you get around.

Memories are thinned and uncertain.

Are there old friends still alive?

Do you have children?

Who helps you day to day?

Your magnificent gray beard hides

the shape of your lips,

the jut of your chin;

your pants are ripped at the knees;

your boots have trod many miles;

your large, well-worn hat covers your head

to your eyebrows, 

but it’s about your eyes, old man,

a weary, world view of life you can’t hide.

You have been through dust storms of all seasons.

How many miles did you ride with the herds?

followed how many roads?

pierced how many lies?

Was there one great love?

One great loss?

Whatever it is you left behind,

you know you can’t go back.

Would you even want to?

But you have wisdom no one else has.

It matters, yes, but who is there to listen,

to take heed of the lessons of an old man?

Your weariness has caught up with you.

It’s your turn to sit in the shade and rest,

to watch a world go by with some disdain,

to nurse the silence of your final years

while a plant in the yard 

sprouts into new life.

from: Memories of things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 52

How Is Where About The Blue Round

 The child within the child within— 

I have questions:

How is the sky?

How is an egg?

How is an egg a sky?

What is the eye roundabout?

But...how is round?

Just round?

Or is the eye a round sky?

Or a blue egg?

Or a planet?

Where is the all get around?

Round, round get around like that.

Rabbits and quail especially get around.

How is especially?

Does it run and leap great distances?

Walk on muddy paths in bare feet?

Is a yawn an especially?

Or a speciality?

You mean like Javelinas and Coyotes?

How is madness?

When I saw you for the first time,

reason went mad.

Where would reason go?

When are the mountains invisible?

How does faith go to cry?

What is the how of a horseless horse.

Who is a roundabout 

stuck with the we of God.

from: A Preface to the Universe:

Love, Nature, & The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p.2

Silence

To some of us the world is blue with silence,
because silence is bright yellow, bright green,

and silence is wide and narrow,

full of prayers, full of good and evil.

And following along are the thunderous silences,

like empty sports stadiums, closed race tracks,

and shattering cruelties that surround us in red.

There are curiosities of silence, of the strong, silent type,

the quiet ones, those children who have been too quiet

for too long; the silence of the sulking, depressed, lonely,

contemplative, guilty, puzzler, wanderer, and lover.

There is the silence of love’s hidden work,

the burning silence of sunrise and sunset,

and when the music begins, silence deepens it.

For the troubled: outward silence; inward screams.

Make room for silence; live in the mercy of silence.

When you are in the noise of nature and you hear 

your footsteps and breathing, bow in that holy place.

Let silence be an art we practice.

from: Finding My Way: One Man's Quest for 

the Divine Presence  

Atmosphere Press 2026  p. 2

Three Poems About Getting Older

 Friends

By the time I realized I was getting older, 
I was sixty-two, divorced and lost in the tall grass.
Over time I denied my aching joints and muscles,
my increased vulnerabilities, and couldn't admit
that I was no longer invincible.
I realized that diseases not normally killers, could now be;
that my body felt like I carried too much of the world.
The hard realization of acceptance
eventually became unavoidable.

I’m seventy-seven and don’t like cooking for one;
I don’t like sleeping alone, and I’m finished with dating.
I’m lost in the age of memories, missing my wife
and our shared memories, estranged from my brothers,
sometimes feeling loneliness and depression,
decidedly unmoored and irrelevant.

So I drink to dull all that.
I sit with my favorite wine or tequila
in a strange universe of silence and solitude,
enjoying my art collection and counting my blessings,
at peace that I am friends with whatever
I’m sipping during the evening’s
waning glow.

Life Support

It is difficult to let go losses,
pain, and disappointments;
of things you think should never
have happened but did.
Some things have had no closure
and we want that finality
but it is elusive.
Some surrender to isolation
and addictions.

Nostalgia settles in us—
what we did, the guilt we carry,
the sorrow, the good times,
and maybe a little obsession over
what could have been,
pestered by those what if questions.
And longing draws us in to what can never be.

We worry about our children who have to work
through their difficulties without our interference.
As children they needed us, then they didn’t.
Thankfully, my children are blessings
and are better parents than I was.

My memories of times and places intermix,
faces and voices fade in and out,
and the memories of my youth
are like looking through rain splattered windows.
Regardless, memory is the life support I hold onto,
despite the shadows and ghosts of the past.

Like Ice

The older I get,
the more vulnerable I feel.
I no longer have that feeling
of invincibility, like I could do
anything and live to tell about it.

Everyone is fearful—
there is too much of the world
in our lives,
too much bloodshed,
too much corruption,
too much greed, avarice, and gluttony.
We are limping and our hearts are horribly bruised.

I catch myself looking at alumni web sites,
counting the number of classmates and friends
who have passed away.
Most of them I hadn’t seen in sixty years,
but I still mourn the losses.

And despite my age, experience, and therapy,
I am unable to shake off the dark companion
that sits on my shoulder like ice.
No matter the therapeutic manipulations,
it’s just there, intractable, a part of my life,
one of many things I have to let be.

~Marc A. Crowley

The Owners Of Granada Street

Willcox, Arizona

The Late 1950s

Good friends, mostly boys, 

a few girls, but we all owned it.

No one fought over it.

It was our refuge from the eruptions

of domestic authority.

Baseball, softball, football,

tricycles, and bicycles,

roller skates with metal wheels 

(remember the key), and hide and seek.

Summer nights, sitting under the corner street light,

swarmed by flying insects, watching bats 

and the occasional owl; 

from boisterous to subdued,

it seemed to us like a pretty good world.

During our street games, 

we stepped aside for the few cars to pass.

The drivers knew us well.

The Baptist pastor and his blue-haired wife scowled,

but everyone else had friendly smiles and a wave.

Once in a while a neighbor

would stop and bat a few balls to us.

I have never forgotten their smiles,

looking like they were twelve again.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub. MS p. 41

I'll Remember This Much

About 1962 

Willcox, Arizona

Let’s not think about where 

our old neighborhood went.

The street names have remained,

but searching will not find much of

anything removed. It just looks different.

Remember how we played basketball

in December’s chill and frost,

fingers becoming stiff and red,

and how the O’Connor’s blood hounds

chased the ball until one of them

bit a hole in it?

In spring, when all flowers blossomed,

the land seemed merciful and soft.

Then summer, with a few days too warm,

displayed new mirages in the distance,

silvery and ghostly and mysterious.

We rode our bikes out toward them

but soon realized we weren’t 

getting any closer.

I remember especially the autumn 

of my eighth grade, when boys and girls,

shimmering in fall colors and full blush,

noticed each other differently, 

gradually becoming aware 

of our awkward civilities, 

of boys’ cracking voices, that whatever began 

blossoming the previous summer 

made us fidgety and confused,

having no idea what was really happening.

In the tenth grade I realized what had

really happened, and that memory

has tickled me ever since.

From: Memories Of Things

Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 46

Reflections Of A Journeyman Seeker

I’m terrified of deep water, sharks, and barracudas;

of long dark tunnels with no end or light in sight.

I have been a lonesome traveler, a Journeyman Seeker,

at home in prayers, a fan of metaphor and paradox;

a window builder, a carpenter, a teacher,

a lover of wine, Beethoven, and Mary Oliver;

of my children and grandchildren and dear friends;

of art, pianos, poetry, caresses, and sky blue eyes;

of an embrace that says I will never let you go.

My journeys have taken me 

to the depths of the Grand Canyon, 

the rugged heights of the Sierra Nevada,

to deserts, forests, and the Columbia River Bar, 

to the Pacific’s boisterous, unrelenting surf,

and into the inexplicable presence of the Divine. 

Everything I have seen and done has been a blessing.

I have mellowed with age, my face weathered, my hair thinned,

disregarding anything a mirror has to say, a small price paid 

for stepping into and out of nature’s spiritual mysteries, 

embracing passion and risking a vulnerable heart laid bare,

for without passion, we won’t know where love will take us,

we won’t know a way into the depth of love and trust, 

we won’t know the wondrous heat of a lover’s fiery kiss.

From: A Preface to the Universe

Unpub. MS p. 57

Subversive Meandering

Listen without ears to the voice

that calls you, Come this way.

The intangible things that breathe 

have no names but are life.

Something in the mist and fog

of our mystical musings awaits us. 

One step more into 

the cosmic wobble, lovers,

always one step more.

Heart, mind, compassion, empathy.

Our souls. Even those that are 

imaginary and fictional, we name. 

Words become us, however reckless.

Nothing that lives can be safe.

Stop listening to the music

and become the music— 

bang the drums, play the trumpets,

sing the prayer, be what you are.

Should we trust anyone’s 

proclamation of faith 

who doesn’t argue with God?

From: Getting There

Unpub. MS p. 15

Getting There

at seventy-seven

Funny is age,

getting there day by day, 

without really noticing, then

wham-O! here they are. 

The years.

The memories.

There was nothing to warn me 

that this was coming,

that sense of sorrow that in my chest swells,

the ache we’ve all had just before

shedding tears from pains or losses,

though some might be shed later,

in their own time,

without warning or reason.

Gently it takes me into a place past all knowing.

I don’t know the why of it,

and I don’t try to know,

but Knowing does come out of it.

And there is sweet nostalgia,

rising, like softened anxiety, 

a five-year-old innocently looking 

into the world, a little scared,

visions of curiosity and wonder;

(the world works how?),

the excitement of all things new,

now saying to myself,

Oh, what I missed, what I missed.

Today I step more softly,

and remember there is joy all around.

The heart knows 

what the mind cannot understand,

how it feeds the soul,

how it balances the body,

stays reason and lets loose the wordless seasons,

opening blossoms— sorrow, nostalgia, and joy— 

each its own beauty.

I know my stories, the who and the how— 

joys, failures, tragedies— 

but the real stories, 

the ones I’ve never breathed,

only my heart 

knows best.

From: Getting There

Unpub. MS p. 39

What Hope Brings

I have traveled throughout 

the western states, and I have seen 

some breathtaking scenery

from Yosemite, the Cascades,

Snake River, the Grand Canyon,

to the turbulence of the Pacific Ocean

where it meets the Columbia River.

I have seen magnificent sunrises and sunsets,

Roosevelt Elk grazing outside my tent;

eagles, hawks, ravens, gulls, and breeching whales.

All of these things made my chest ache,

my breath deepen, my arms stretch out,

wanting to take all of it in to my body.

I have a notion that true love,

however defined, would be like that, 

and that lovers would look at each other 

like they would look at the beauty of nature;

their chests would ache, pulses quicken,

breaths deepen, and their arms would

wrap around each other in a way 

that says, I will never let you go.

Such is my fancy, my dream, my hope,

and hope will always bring good things.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub MS p. 44

From Where Love

Three Short, Related Meditations

I.

To know more than just things,

words are not enough.

There must also be shivering

within our souls like surf 

that endlessly swirls and frets

around piles of rocks, water worn.

II.

A shortened life is never more

than half a breath away.

Our knowledge of sorrow will take us

into the depth of kindness,

calming rough-edged lives.

It isn’t possessing that matters.

For millennia, many have chosen

to make the best of love.

III. 

Earth changes.

Marsh water rises gently into mist.

Ah, look, there are other ways to wander.

Regardless the speed of our feet,

the wings of a falcon,

or clouds before the release

of water made new,

let us wander gritty and well-tempered

with a gentler step upon this suffering earth.

From: Memories Of Things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 28

The Same Trump

 ...and Trump posted a video depicting the Obamas as apes.

This is the same Trump who mocked disabled people;

the same Trump who said that because he's famous

he can grab women by the "pussy";

the same Trump who encouraged a takeover

of the Congress of the United States that ultimately KILLED five people;

the same Trump who didn't bat an eye when the mob

wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pense;

the same Trump who, on his first day in office in 2025,

pardoned those same people who stormed Congress;

the same Trump who has dispensed with morality and civility

and allows thugs with badges, guns, and face maskes

to arrest a five year old child.

And how much richer is he now than when he took office

a year ago?

Have people lost their shit detectors?

Have people lost their ability to be sickened by this behavior?

Have people lost their ability to recognize immoral actions?

Have we lost any sense of mercy, justice, and generosity?

Oh, dear God, awaken us.

Words On Fire

We need words 

rampaging back and forth,

up and down from everywhere, 

like blood drained from an opened vein.

Words that carry life and death,

danger and challenge, risk and terror,

love and kindness, fearful and brave,

wandering in the heart of darkness,

feckless and undaunted;

searing, razor sharp words slicing

the reigns of blind stupidity,

mediocrity, and tyranny,

shredding all of them

into millions of pieces.

In the end what we really need are words

of blazing love, blistering fire unleashed;

unabashed, bare, vulnerable, indomitable,

ready to ignite a fearful heart 

and go bravely into the wild passions.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub. MS p. 28

I Alone

On a dual-tracked road

through the Coronado grassland,

the border wall stares down hard,

yet the mountain shines above it

with the first and last light of the day.

From: How We Wander:

Short Poems in 75 Words or Less

Unpub. MS p. 11

Twelve Strings

While Leo Kottke’s music pranced about the room,

I thought about sunlight in all its forms.

I thought about a cat named Zeke;

a dog named Cooper;

rain storms, lightning, owls, ravens, 

and the Pacific a mile away.

I thought about the mystery

infusing the ebb and flow of tides,

a mystery that’s in my blood and marrow,

but I don’t know how to name it.

All anyone will say is,

Just dance to it.

From: How We Wander:

Short Poems in 75 Words or Less

Unpub. MS p. 27

Pen

My fountain pen is sometimes a snout, 

sniffing paper, poking here and there,

leaving a trail of random thoughts 

with quick trips down a rabbit hole.

Its discoveries are kept secret from me 

despite my hand’s guidance.  

There is persistent resistance

from it, like teenage angst.

When I want to write some thoughts 

about the nine different colors on my walls

(and darned if I know which to choose), 

or to wonder if I am as old as I really am

(just yesterday I was ten or fourteen or something),

I am harassed with irritating, ill-tempered penmanship 

and drawings of geometrics that appear in the margins.

My revenge is to recap the rebellious snout,

to let it lie on the pad in darkness,

expecting better behaviors

the next time it’s freed

from its solitary 

confinement.

From: Getting There

Unpub. MS p. 10

Prayer Of Saint Francis Of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not

so much seek to be consoled

as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen

A Woman Of Reticence

She was cleaning 

her dining room table

of the miscellaneous piles 

of accumulated stuff she had been

too distracted to care about—

papers, letters, coupons, bills, tax forms, 

and unopened mail.

She inserted stuff into file folders

or threw things into the trash bag,

already half full.

We sipped wine unhurried,

tossing each other bits of conversation

and notations on the miscellany of life.

There was an occasional trip down a rabbit hole;

the music continued while brats simmered in beer.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.

She was such a beautiful woman

and knew I was attracted to her.

I wondered if she saw me squirm just a little.

She told me I couldn’t 

fall in love with her,

suggesting only friendship.

Wanting more, I was either too hopeful 

or too foolish to understand why I couldn’t love her.

Yet I did, and painfully so,

eventually surviving the rigors of rejection.

From: In Transition

Unpub. MS p. 25

Are We There Yet

Don’t give me a rational path to God.

Where would that take us? 

Inside boundaries and fences.

That’s not a good fit.

Desire and Imagination—think that.

Universal and Infinite—think that.

The soul’s joy would be found 

in the what and where of nature’s kingdoms.

Lose your preconceptions

of the sacred, the holy, the frightened, 

the unredeemed, the vulnerable, and the sinful.

Think the how of the sweetness of grief;

the where of the freedom of limits;

the why of the warmth of being naked;

the what of the art of eloquent silence.

There exists a barn of words

full of its own blue emptiness.

Does anything really need to be heard

from there?

Cultivate silence.

Besides, what is the answer to the question, 

Where is There?

What of simplicity?

Sunrises and sunsets,

water flowing down your throat

on a dusty day,

the passions of loving,

and ocean up to your knees at the beach.

Compare that to the tragedies

of drowning in whatnots;

of your feet stuck in the mud 

and your head lost in the clouds.

Where is There?

There is wherever your heart will take you.

From: A Preface To The Universe

Unpub. MS p. 24

Kids Daydreaming In Willcox

Summers, 1957-1963

It was something in the shape of the landscape,

the weight of light and darkness, our impressionable age,

the shrug of the wind, the chatter of creatures, and how 

the moon poured itself into the tangles of fear and fantasy.

The neighborhood dogs became animals

of unusual stature. They walked taller

so we gave them new names like 

Bruiser, Ginger, Fang, Casper, and Winnie. 

Sometimes we wondered if time stood still 

on the cloudy days. Watches were unaffected.

Andy said that real time stops.  All watches are

past real time. They could be years ahead.

There was no reason to doubt him.

Judy liked to collect rain water. 

When she got a full cup, she watered the 

little rock garden she kept in her bedroom.

Mary, Judy’s little sister, applauded when 

she saw everyone being followed by flutterbys.

Sue and Bertha saw flocks of birds they had never seen.

They named them ‘Garblers’ for their confusing song.

They came every summer until Sue and Bertha 

started high school. The birds were sadly missed.

We clothes-pinned canasta cards to our bicycles 

to slap against the spokes. We all rode Harleys,

bravely exploring the wilderness.

On moon-lit nights we rode our Harleys into the sandpit,

singing Ghost Riders, the balm to our grief,

asserting freedom from the chaos of some of our homes.

We were the Paladins who kept our world right side up

so it would spin into another day, and all would stay well,

with never a thought that one day all this would disappear.

From: Stumbling Through Dreams, Memories

and the Unintelligible

Unpub. MS p. 8

Up The Fall Snow Down Flake

Late winter, Coyote staring at a creek

This side of madness

is the last place of the downy flake.

In the up of the waterfall,

only the mad look would know to 

among the worn stones round and smooth,

where water like rambunctious children flows,

where leaves like rudderless boats

for the seasons dried

to their next life are carried,

where up the flake of the snow down falls.

From: The Coyote Writings

by Marc A. Crowley writing as Coyote

Soon to be published, p. 5

A Rambling Sense Of Things

I’m rainy with things physical

and transient, of little and great import,

old beliefs and new about 

how the world should be

but isn’t and never was.

Possessed by an intractable 

sense of romance, my heart

I still wear on my sleeve

for everyone to see.

Memories will not turn loose 

of certain lost things— 

the childhood toy that ignited a galaxy,

the special friend from school

who saved my life more than once,

that one lost love, the one I thought 

was the fire of life,

as clear now as they were then,

simply the stuff of life.

Between being awake and dreaming,

in the realm that seems like nothing,

there is an entire universe in vitro,

a secret slowly growing a heart and soul,

a Breath within a breath,

becoming an eternal presence.

From: Memories Of Things

Left Behind: A Non-linear Recollection

Unpub. MS p. 31

A Monster So Unkind

The oldest wind of the Sonoran Desert 

is also the youngest; stealthy, from newborn 

to maturity in minutes, filling the sky sandy gray.

We watch it roar into our towns and cities, 

a wall of dust infiltrating every opening 

and crack around doors and windows.

Watch what it grabs and what it doesn’t;

a formless goliath that shoves us around, 

yanks our clothing; ferocious and taloned,

it rips off branches and roofs.

Seemingly vengeful, it’s just wind and dirt,

nature so simple, yet so inescapable 

is its grip on catastrophe.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub. MS p. 5

Fire, Passion, And Stairways To Heaven

Ask a question any way you want.

The truth of the answer it won’t change.

Could the answers change the questions

into some other grammatical form or language?

Some day I will reach a place of Knowing nothing.

I’m wondering if invisible I will be. Or empty?

Better you’re transformed into the fullness of a symphony

with lots of brass, with a conductor with strong arms,

swamped by sound, swamped by the sound of love, 

by loving the harmonies, the chord progressions,

digressions, compressions, suggestions, avoiding the

false prophets and easy answers to abstract questions.

But what pain will it bring us, who knows, 

when our kisses fail to rise above simple disguises,

kisses of no fire, no passions, no stairways to heaven?

Answer from fullness, not from emptiness.

Answer with Mozart, with Bach, with Tchaikovsky.

Answer in full voice, sing in full harmony.

From: A Meandering Search for

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 12

Notes From Another Realm -- Part II

There is nothing less than anything; look we do, 

and breathe, and voices of Rosemary and Sage 

spread their fragrant anythings in less 

than all things nothing.

~Coyote

Fragmented poetics, non-linear beauties;

words, unexpected choruses, and

finally, the iambic bluster.

The difference between passionate love

and madness is like the difference

between red and red.

From wine is the richness of Life;

from Tequila is the fullness of Earth,

but it’s the fragrances of flowers 

that make the stars twinkle.

When is it time to discard useless things?

When you cannot see yourself in the mirror.

Know yourself by what you discard. 

Life took me by the hand and such 

a grip it was, but I thought 

I was waiting for the amorous glance.

Is home a place or a longing for a place?

Or a condition of the heart?

Or is it nostalgic for something 

that never was but could have been?

Can you feel the offer of serene greetings?

I’m aging, though not old and 

not finished growing or growling.

What is the way of coming out of yourself,

that brings another world right to you,

to land on your shoulders like a bird?

When that time comes, you will have

passed the vanishing point.

From:  Finding My Way:

One Man’s Spiritual Quest

For The Divine Presence

Unpub. MS p, 30

Notes From Another Realm -- Part I

Poetry he has written, for clues Poet looks, 

seeking a sense of Divinity, awkward decorum, 

and syntax wayward. A bumpy road it is. 

~Coyote

Then we grew up losing the 

best part of ourselves— 

that wild landscape 

and our souls’ starry constellations.

We knew how to measure success,

but we didn’t know how to measure 

what was lost.

I don’t remember a time as strange as now.

My first inclination is to run away to hide.

When I look in the mirror, I sometimes see

a scared twelve-year-old boy.

The passions of music break down 

the barriers between this reality and any other. 

Love opens doors to mystery 

and a yearning for the presence of the Divine.

How can one be without the other?

Politics is like a harem of fondled hatreds.

Today we get too much of the world

and we are weary of it.

Our souls need emptiness

to make way for the unintelligible, 

pointing us to a path unseen, 

so we go willingly.

Sunrise came with the roosters’ insistence

that orange predominates. 

Protestors fluttered into an eternal quest

for a divine shade of blue.

Friend Sapphire dances in the sand, 

sings to birds, runs into the wind, 

and begs the ocean’s magic to give up itself.

She makes her life unusual and beautiful.

From:  Finding My Way:

One Man’s Spiritual Quest

For The Divine Presence

Unpub. MS p, 29

Today

It's the Sunday go to meetin',

a right we all have (I think);

we have other rights, too, don't we?

I vaguely remember something

about due process...

I'm having coffee in the safety of my home,

but isn't it true that no one is safe?

I'm thinking I can't wear my heart

on my sleeve anymore.

Would that brand me as dangerous?

How about you? 

Where is your heart?

Closed for the holidays and then some?

We can still care, right? 

For all to see Hope.

See it! Feel it!

HOPE.

And where is that bastard

who murdered Renee Nicole Good?