Of Desert and of Deseret Miscellaneous Poems by Dee Wolfe copyrighted 1998 as Old Sol Above the Wasatch  Compton  Sleepwalk My dreams are moonlit paths I take to every night, Restless with the apple leaves In whispering flight. An old dog groans in his sleep And rattles the rusty links. Chickens brood in their roost But one black eye blinks. Street lights follow my shadow, Sullenly and rude. We guard the road, they say. Who are you to intrude? I am the breath of a ghost As I go dreaming a dream Through dissipating dusk Along a silver stream; Where I behold my window lamp, A yellow, sleepy ember, A beacon from another life I don't remember. Starlings Bleak breasted near a concrete wall A pair of starlings on the snow Squared off in a tight circle, Oblivious to Winter's blow.   Dark as deacons, sad as pall, They wrestled upon a dangling worm, A frozen remnant past all hope, Another victim of the storm.   Accumulated clouds in tumbling Wrought fierce cold upon their mange; A pair of teachers, eyes of brass Saw nothing beyond their narrow range. And all the while the wind swept down They battled, priest on starving priest, Only agreed one worm was porridge Rivaling any Christmas feast. Cherry Creek -- 1975 At Cherry Creek the vision came When sunset burned through town As if the rays illuminated Sacred ground. Among the creaking clapboard shacks Whistling in the walls brought dread; A raven swooped from everywhere Crying as to wake the dead. The silhouette of Doom, himself In his black hearse its engine gunned, The raven flew from sight and then The very breeze sat stunned. Nothing Knew Nothing new in the way I keep My mind though I may wake or sleep Or dream upon those sights of the light: The canine cutting edge of night. I am neither afraid to say Where was work I made my play; Did with fork into it force My way and hardly played, of course. Nor did disdain, I don't disdain Obligations to the same Who make a fact a fact a fact, Eternal law of every act. How shines old Jove with every day? He does so in a humane way To ease the flight of the lesser light To the canine cutting edge of night. A Needle Is I fell apart in end-time Coughing twice and groaning low; The fluid slowly seeping in, My heart began to slow. Regret's a public toilet With all the lot observing me Perform this parody of relief-- Or take a chance and hope to flee. A sentence is for murderers A game of pickup sticks; One mislaid across another Forms a crucifix Which imitates this gurney Where I lie awaiting Him, Messiah, while the eyes of my Accusers blur and dim. No final meal of bread will do, The broken crust is ever His. My wine is venom in the vein... How like the cross this needle is. A Despairing Ditty It tires me This world In all its blustering idiocy, A tattered flag unfurled In a disappointing wind; Like people I have known Who'd bend their backs forever If the film were shown And reeled around their lives. That would make me grin. I'd see it tonight in black and white To the pluck of my mandolin. Above Us Nightly Above us nightly from the West Salts move on the breeze, Spirits scooped from the water, Sent like so many bees To buzz an ocean of sleepers, Raising, lowering as they breathe In waves of deepest calm As this nocturnal sea. The salt foam undulates And laps the shore all night, Raises, lowers rhythmically In pale stone light. Soft flights come with quiet As the dreamer sees The salt of sleep Ghostly in the breeze. Veiled behind a gauze of dreams Stroll unconsciously Pillars all in white Beside the calm, gray sea. Train Track Instant At one brown time on rust-red rails A locomotive slow and creaking Moved upon me from the West Driven blind, nothing seeking. Freight-less, bound for Sugarhouse As always every Saturday, Nonetheless I could not pass And waited while it went its way. One red second over glass It shivered on its trembling wheels Like cinematic ribbons Tangling in their reels. Sunlight panned that length of train Telling all its history As if it were a meteor Hurtling toward its mystery.   At that green moment saplings waved, Grateful wives to the happily met When the glint of a scratch across one car Thrust like a bayonet. Laundromat At the laundromat I was jolted Out of a good book I happened to be hiding in When I came up for a look. Bending over the nearest table A pair of tight-fitting jeans Made me anxious for the world And all it means. Like Kilroy I watched and waited: Please bend lower and let me see Hanging out of the windbreaker Surreptitiously, The inspiration of the ancients. When she turned my way Her face was lined with the ages. She smiled as if to say "Like what you see there, boy?" But I, Alarmed by the fact that I had sinned, Turned back to my book as if engrossed, As if she had never been. Swift, Sweet Canto Swift, sweet canto over the highway Hums with the mantric tread, A ribbon taut across this basin, Plucked with an arrow-head. Billowing over stone and sage Balloons the fragrant desert dawn Held by nimble golden glories-- Let it go. It's gone. Arriving to the yellow dashes, Blips in the high vibrato of tires, I tune to the pistons hammering To a thousand thousand fires. Over the bounding blacktop boundless A hundred and twenty miles an hour I leave behind the Golden Eagle Tufting feathers atop her tower. Ahead of me wild Devils dance To the winds of the day beginning to grow; And Dawn it is, and blazing Jove Warms the West with a Fatherly glow. Where I Go Where I go I plant a seed (The necessary part of me) Not for want nor of a need Nor of some small desire to be. What is is less a finger's touch As crystals pending in the sky Which seem some less not near as much As that which touches your and my... My Heaven is a seeding place. I say "Bring seeds to cover the land In crest and crevice, black and clay, On the ice and in the sand. "Send seeds to sprout and sprout to leaves. From colorless in color come And grow for later taking, sheaves, Each sprout a hand, each leaf a thumb." Hands will move and hands are two; Mine are sprouts and I am a tree, And we are a forest, I and you, Not of a small desire to be. Easter '96 in Honeyville A breeze through brittle thistle Shivers and cracks While redwing blackbirds in the wires Quarrel above the railroad tracks. On a Sunday morning in April Grandpa slaps his farmer's legs And hides beneath the matted grass A couple dozen colored eggs. And as old Jove above the Wasatch Rises over the cloudless dome, A family gathers in the pasture Singing 'Love at Home...' One Morning in Farmington A leg of water ran beneath the snow As milky night made gray approaching day; Three deer were seen to cross the highway,      slow, To cock their heads suspiciously my way While I stood watching from the front door step To make the bus before it made the bend. They came to eat while Farmington still slept, To see what shoots above the snow could      lend.   Across the roadway silent watchers vied Trying to see unseen what held them gripped In still life--but for one who cried "Look! Three deer--" which of a sudden slipped Away, become in the pasture's shrouded whist As indistinct as vapors in a mist. Compton Road Compton Road is my itinerary Back to Sunrise up the rutted way Where grapes and berries tangled in the path Under the over-hang of high boxelders. Cherries at the fence-line to the pasture Ringed the gnarled chapel of a grove Where I once spent the distant afternoons On a bed of grass beside the broken fence, Dreaming in the deep, luxuriant shade. I pine for you beside your briny sea, Drowsy in a dawn of golden vines; And where the new day builds upon the rise, Slopes and gullies in a verdant haze Mystify the hills of Francis Peak. My merest hope becomes a meadowlark Aloft forever in that scented breeze Of alpine sage along the canyon creek, A happy kite above an endless day.   I dreamt that I, your prodigal, came home To see the subdivided lots in ruin, All the empty prose that made for suburbs, Punch lines in a pavement gone to flower. So, you'd swept the clutter all away With scrub-oak and with cleansing milkweed As, anticipating my return, You made for me from perfect memory The April of my first awakening.   I will not betray you while I remember. Let the brash dawn bake your purple thistle, Bear heavy on the sullen mind of your cattle, Burn brittle with a searing, yellow fire Pastures hammered into fool's gold. You will awaken always in my days Though August ages pass me, year on year, Ascending generations never knowing Underneath their presence I once went. Grand Canyon We drove out to the canyon one Spring day, My wife and I were in the proper mood As we were tourists on our merry way To view the colors and the lovely wood. Observing downward from the highest haven We saw the tops of nimbuses that swirled A thousand feet beneath an arcing raven On the ether of another world.   In truth, it was a gouge in a great plateau. An old, vermillion man beside that wound, Upon a rock, talked like an ancient crow As craftily he matched the canyon's sound, The like of which is too hard to re-tell, In syllables that one can never spell.

Page 2     2/19/83 A breeze is blowing from the south, And I see every day Starlings brave the road As snowflakes cease to stay. Winter wanes, And all along the wire know That March is on his way. In citadels of crumbling snow, Beaten icy gray, Winter's saboteurs Fail to seize what may Alter things. They upon their pyre know That March is on his way. Granger 1959 On Granger's grim frontier my sis and I, Injuns in the Lord's sweet mercy, played In dusty bunch-grass on a windless plain When haloes ringed the venom-yellow sky, And upturned clay was poisonous as spray From a rattler's fangs spat on a windowpane. The ice-cream man rolled on while we stood by Eating welfare-bread with mayonnaise.   Old man Lizard lived on a barren hill; His lawn was dead--we didn't make it die. He caught us in his cold, reptilian gaze And hissed "Get off. Get off my lawn--"until We left the blankness of his drooping eye To weather like a knot-hole in the haze. November Wind Trees their swirling leaves unwind, Their branches creak and bend; Birds aloft no perch can find-- Blow, November Wind. Yesterday flies down our street, Whose headlines reach and rend On every gutter grate they meet-- Blow, November wind. Private Passion In our poignant passion She was a ghost's reality, Vapors and a resonance Moving in and out of me. Beyond my understanding How a photograph arouses pain that I can still remember From the distant grain. For Sue Some nights I travel back to early days. In that young Summer we were barely wed. Under fragrant lilac blooms we lazed; We hugged each other happily--and off to bed! Do you recall the music of that time? Waves of our inland sea in ebb and flow Made salty melodies to fall and climb On Seventh East above us and below. As I recall our cats were kittens then. I banged an old guitar with catgut string And saw high zephyrs in the valley spin And heard a trumpet in the canyon ring. Trade those moments? Not for eternity. I'd have them again if you would marry me. Sunset--Upper Wasatch You are the evening sight I see Who, vagrant, ride the reddening air, And shape that trace of memory I single file in lines with care. Whose weight is pending in the hills, Imprisoned with the hill-locked mind In canyons where the river spills With tears to flow that still remind. Your fear I see in sunset stain; Your stripling eyes are fear enough That glitter in the tall, dead grain, That skitter in the clump and brush. Your spawn lie clumped in baking blood; The dark ore stones lie up in ruin Where the bones press in the mud As lupus lies beside the bruin. Rhythms in my footsteps keep A dull vibration, mind on mind, Near where an age's memories sleep Before my feet, beneath, behind. "...hidden in the misty woods." Who was son of the light Was heir to the light Of the might of the Comet's Ominous flight. As a running bore ran With a roar the plan Read entrails better Than augury can. Come Friday, give or take A day, the pointed stick Held sway, No cowering Men in suits to wake. No bills to pass had they By Noon in that mysterious day The White House doors stood barred, Hounds in the mist at bay. When he took power, he, Of angel hair, did he Deceive the salt by the sea Who played at prophecy. Nothing Much Nothing much I will express But that which isn't me; The same I weather to impress Some grand authority. It isn't much, my soul today, Encapsulated 'round By one dark moat of dissolution Barren as the salted ground. Poor Us Mine were urchins near the realm Of media; unto the glass Portal they pressed their noses Begging the tiniest remnant of class. The world of wealth that lay beyond us, Castles under petaled skies, Alpine lakes as blue as bliss, And elegance (elusive prize), Were windows on a universe Denied. I spent those days Above the desert contemplating Angels and angelic ways. Victoria B.C. (1998) I pray we never ban the human being, All imperfections made against the law. Tell me, what then can we try to sing If every song is seen to have a flaw? "Why?" they ask me. "Why'd you ever come To Canada? We're one fifth unemployed. Nothing here worth seeing or having, Chum," They smile to say but are not overjoyed To hear my own premeditated answers, Nor present their fiery opinions As they had when they were lucky chancers In Columbia's loveliest dominions. Meanwhile I observe the envied coast, The Strait of Juan de Fuca like a gem; So obvious that no one has to boast And therefore do I truly envy them Who may resent this loud American. He stops to chat with every soul he meets, And wonders why he's not Canadian To kick the cobbles on these rainy streets. I'm grateful most that they ignore my flaws Which renders sweet that bronze solemnity Of Queen Victoria whose gentle laws Began my crisis of identity. March 1963 On a still Sunday chill as piety Sis and I into the mountain wandered Up the incline to the burial grounds Above the leafless gray boxelders lining Compton Road, beyond which we could see The edges of our world in sage pastel. We wove a path around the barren brush And lost ourselves above the fallow hayfield. Stooping low to fetch for bloodless agates Mirroring the polished, marble sky, We veered from pebbles paired as if they seemed The eyes of dour and observant demons. We were children. We were new to the hill. The frail dominions of the Summer grass Resembled us, trembled as we trembled To the hollow groan of the gaping granite, Stones like old men leaning in the wind. And we were new to the ominous eagle arcing High in the turbulent dome of white above, Whose hateful eye like pearl obsidian Pursued us to an overhang of boulders. Rain in rivers rolled the red rock down As from the sudden tear of an eagle's talons. Shivered we to the low reproach of a howler Sounding where the castle keep stood sentry. There the darkness brooded in the hollows; There the bleak light pierced through parapets. Spindly oak in bundles scrubbed the sky, Whipped around like brittle, swirling bones Of the dead arisen, resurrected, twirling To the wand of a necromancer's angry magic. Storms arising out of nowhere fast Were grave reminders: We, the very little, Ought to strive for insignificance. Hand in empty hand, we hurried home. Old Age I muttered with Old Age as all the while He leaned upon the bricks that formed the tiers Of every whitewashed irony he mustered. "I know how it used to be," he wheezed, "Before I was a rack of tattered leather" (Sails tied to a wishbone). He believed If he could hang a few years on those bricks He'd be them by and by and leave behind His shade to shudder in the blurred borders Of a silent cinematic tale of mists. I stooped beside Old Age while she went moping Scouring her box of discard rags; Her rickety fingers made a frantic gesture shaping all the years she'd spent and spend Adorning gaudy colors to her face Of withering gazes (skin as white as fish bone). And her eyes were bowls of hope. She said Now I will wear bright colors all the day When I come calling down the jealous moon." She shuddered like a fragment in the wind. I slowly pedaled with Old Age behind me On my bicycle the length of all My avenues unto the steepest grade Until I argued "YOU. Get off my fender. Walk behind me since you think you have to. Look to your own troubles." Old Age answered "I will paint my face a gaudy color, Mold myself into a scowling shade," As struggle he did to mount my bike once more, Straddling his spindle-legs, wheezing his joy. Apology A worn man shuffles toward town As boughs of heavy apples bounce On the breeze that curls his hair and collar. Weight of endless waiting wears upon him, And he drags his passion like a sack To stop beneath a woman's window. Under the gray ghost of her shaded eyes he calls While she entwines her lover in an altered cave Behind the remembering pane, Its cuts and cracks of microscopic days. Night wears like a folded crease On a mottled, down-turned page Where all his calling wrote itself In lines connecting him to the moon and stars A thousand nights ago. Though he imagines she can hear him, Turns her fluttering eyes to the pane, An ear to a mumbled name, Her fingers raking in the womb of darkness, He can only hope she wakes and rises, Hope for the movement of her naked hips In the window's lonely eye. He stays until the stars turn one by one on edge Canceled to the chrome of eastern clouds, Another tin-pan glare of accusation Singling one who fumbles in its light. He stoops as if a hard wind drove him Like a weather-vane steered for home. And he will rock in his chair and wait, His eyes sewn shut to hide his longing For that final day to end his walking And his wasted breath. Your Hand To hold you like a book in my fingers Is to know the sea Of boundless waters, a gambit for immortality. And what are words but strands That vanish south and north, Every syllable a grain of sand As one goes forth? The lines that speak in secret Of your life inside your hand Evoke the cryptic code that is The restless, shifting sand. Our Maker He roams this Earth In myriad disguise, Our Maker, only poets Ever recognize Because they care to. Cut me down to size, Oh, Lord, I see Thee Like a zephyr rise. Deep Night I stroll the walks nocturnal with my Love Through avenues of sleepy Deseret While rolls the silent majesty above This paradise of leaves in silhouette. As blooming lilacs stir a fragrant brew To fill the night beyond the astral band, So too my Love arises lilac blue, Become as star-light in my open hand. And every hedge-row is a friend I know, And every bending Iris, where the lawn Occasions with a greeting, waves hello As she and I move slowly unto dawn, Where she departs but only as she wills, Sweet lucifer, above the Wasatch hills. Farmington History Above the freeway lights I settle in Beyond the suburb cold as Pluto's moon, Lie back upon a hard-pack drift of snow And listen to the calling canyon wind. In Farmington, they say, the East wind blew When Brother Brigham rode his buggy North, And knocked the buggy over off the road, Which put our prophet in a vengeful stew. He marched up State to give that breeze a piece Of prophet's ire, and kicked the swirling grit; He shook his fist and, gathering up his girth, Commanded that by God the wind shall cease. Whiskey pours down like a burning creek. "Serves you right, you howler, settle down! What sort of element are you to cower All because a prophet deigns to speak?" Above me stoops Orion on the fringe, An old sot drunk with golden streams of light. I'll join him in the stars and we will see The worlds unnumbered called upon to binge.