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.
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