Three Poems
Fire
Dung beetle and bear incinerated alike as one hundred foot Ponderosa pines explode into torches. With the voice of one thousand enraged elephants the fire draws a vortex into itself: an ouroboros consuming everything.
Trees
Some of the big ones were rising from the New England soil when Columbus ravaged Hispaniola. The really old ones were sprouting as Leif Ericson sailed out of the Newfoundland fog to see waves breaking on the rocks at L'Anse aux Meadows. But only the most ancient drank in the sunlight as Brendan's coracle floated from the myth that was Ireland to face aboriginal America.
The Dance
An amoeba splits itself and becomes its own generations. Contracted chromosomes dance round the spindle-pole, the metaphase contra, spin and bow down and back then it’s off to another partner and, after the dance it's all nipples and skin: close at the ear, panting, even toes taught in a spasm of pleasure. Reaching out ninety three million miles, the sun's tongue licks our fertile earth.