Ode on St. Massacre's Day

for Pamela

What is
                   this
                                gazing upon?

As Samuel Taylor Coleridge said
"There you go"
               or was it
                           "Why you have to be trippin' for?"

Recording your dreams is like
fact-checking Time magazine (with
or without wings)

The man in the long black kimono

            a pensive cloud haunts his eyes

                        the sky over Rodeo Beach

"If your life story can fit onto a Hawaiian shirt
you should probably start wearing a leather jacket"

coral-stem, sapphire, agate & jade
are the prevailing colors of the day

& though not as dark as your eyes the
waves are just as relentless

crashing on the shore of my
undivided attention