From San Rafael Hill

 

High hill seats

Nothing on my mind.

Mountain biker plows

past on a downhill

fling.

Peruvian flute

born for mountains

floats

Late November landscape

shimmers

with unexpected sun.

Still juicy with

life in the hourglass,

I live this discontinuous
spacelapse movie,

only faith — or fate
as saving soundtrack.

Placebo medicine

triggers systems.

Work path opens up
a big hole.

I careen off the

walls with the kids,
virtual reality style

look to mountain

tops for comfort

and coordinates

climb parallel peaks

to gaze at Big Magic still above.

Never left its sight.

Messages traipse back:
You are this. You are that.

Still catching armored

rays, letting others judge

while what is needed

is way inside.

And when the world
turned rainbow parfait,

What was in those leaves, I sighed

Placebo, he replied,

his usual ironies in the fire.

Highest quality, said I.
It was enough, for then.

Disaster dances around frilly hope

in a wild tarantella.

Then that glum headachy sky
can transmute

to sun once again
in the wink of an I.
Whose joke is this, anyway,

the way it is, in this state
on the very far edges of things.

A complex bittersweet tang:

I give thanks for my life

in California.