Rick Park

When I think of my mother I think not of gentle; I think of magenta, I think of a flame.

My classmate Buddy brought a box to school — size of a shoebox,   string-tied shut. He carried it everywhere, but would not open it,   nor explain it. It might have been empty, might have contained leaves,   or something sweet for his girlfriend. By day’s end we were all crazy to know, but Buddy just smiled. […]

“It’s something about my life,” she began — but just outside the bookstore window, bedlam reigned. I cupped a hand behind an ear. “Selling books was all,” she said; I caught that much, then the jackhammers resumed. Maybe they were re-setting the sewers. “… and to sleep,” she said, during a lull. “The street is […]

Leggings below long skirts against the chill of the fog — stiff coastal breeze keeping kayakers in sea spray, down jackets, bonfires at campsites Not like the summers I knew in Sacramento, triple digits, or over the Great Plains, heat and humidity both in the nineties. No, it’s a Humboldt heat-wave — maybe a little […]

My Shakespeare has no spine — O, ’twas a brave old book, but too many times hefted, crack’d open, it tore away,    nor is it back today. My Iliad has no face — but lies uncovered, like the rubble of the ancient city, to the elements, to time and rampaging Greeks. My Bukowski butt-ends, backless, like a […]

Satisfactions of silence, rocking to and fro in changeless heat. These are the dog days, but without dogs — smooth leaves shrivel and scallop, enduring the brilliance beyond chlorophyll, green more out of inertia than natural force. I rock with the rhythms of breathing, chestfuls of heat that will not wane, even if nothing drives […]

What was Super wasn’tthe size (it was waning)or the brightness (though it shonelike a torch through my skylight,pulling me in a human tide to the roof) —no, what was Super wasthat you could see it! Clear sky!And a few planets —a nd wasthat Rigel, there in Orion’s foot?(Where is Barry Evans when you need him?) […]

Though Halloween has come and gone the bridge still sports its ghostly sheets, in place for months now, its four spans still bearing traffic, still standing guard over the Caltrans skiff beached nearby. Come and gone as well are the sunny days for bridge-painting, but the mystery shroud (our local Turin) still ripples in sea-winds, […]

Every ten years I write one. Sometimes playfully, like a crossword, antic — Maybe this time the right touch, the light one. I tried Optics — Oh, I thought I was the bright one! Even brought up Spinoza — perhaps too pedantic — Every ten years I write one. Now, consciously fashioning lines, as might […]

Wild seed-soaking rains    give way to root-warming sun:       short-shadowed summer.

Another barn down — what is it about rubble that so wanders my eye from the road? Is it the latent carpenter in me, the joist salvager, or just the itch to fix what might not have been lost, Or the treasure hunter, seeking old gold rings, jumbled tools and jewels, Or yet again the […]