The dark skinned girl

with ringlets of black curls

falling carelessly down her back

cast me a white toothed smile

of soft invitation of love

upon catching my soft gaze.

 

Seductively she threw her

ringlets over her left breast

exposing the spider tattoo

adorning her slender neck.

 

I smiled back a brown-eyed tear

she saw was soft regret for

a time that would never be.

 

I finished my cold coffee

gathering my pack to my back

to head to the red desert of 

sacred solitary mystery.

We longed to be on a 

high sunny mountain

above narrow valleys 

that shelter our minds

during the lonely 

Snow Moon night.

 

Only writing our 

poetry and reading

Virginia Woolf 

will give comfort until

tomorrow’s warming

new light erases

sad quiet solitude of

warm dark cafes with 

frosted windows beyond

now dead luminarias that

once kept hope alive.

 

Snow fell on our

extended tongues 

tasting of a fresh coolness 

like from a first sweet kiss.

Bloused camo pants

spit shined Birkenstocks

Led Zeppelin T-shirt

a once virile body

alcohol wasted.

 

Drug addled mind

inside a ponytail

from 1972

New Mexico commune

by red cliffs.

 

Walking through 

silent city streets reciting 

Proust

Baudelaire

Burroughs

Kerouac

Frost

verses and cantos

keep him alive . . . insane.

 

A tiny sparrow

named Juno

searches for crumbs

in a dark alley. 

Here I am in Scottsdale, Arizona, away from the Colorado cold and snow, wanting to bask in the warm sun but the weather gods are against me, only offering cool, cloudy, and rainy days. We are having to go back a day early on next Wednesday instead of Thursday, as we had planned, due to another storm bringing more snow to both of our two possible routes home. Drat. Back to long pants, fleece, hats, gloves, and down jackets.