I forget where the car's
parked, each spring I forget
the names of the wild flowers opening

a certain blue, how to breathe
how to dress for bed and, every time
this happens, which way

my father turned. I can't bear you
seeing me, can't bear you. I'm not
the drinker but the one telling you

wait in the dark with the children
here in the rain beside myself
while I go back-- not the drinker

but maybe that's what it is
to see again, what it is to stand
in a west-side bar

painting furious clouds,
cadent sun above black ocean
oil on a wide panel tilted

for the applause. You wouldn't
want me yellow rising up
through the floorboards,.

this way I'm cool,
another lost cause among country legends


THE WESTERN INLAND SEA

This noon it's too bright to matter
but pulling weeds yesterday
I found a face in the garden.
So many things I'm not sure I should tell you . . .
A smiling, heavenly face impossible to cover up.

I'd been snorkeling a white lagoon
on the Western Inland Sea. Water that clear
is like swimming in magnetism. I could see
my soul down there gliding along

I was lulled by the impressions
of guitars they told us were reptilian footprints.
"Not my kind of music," you said.
I looked up. I could see where
this was headed, the manic unity, the blue drop-off.

So this morning I drove north under the sun
and couldn't stop. Where somebody had slammed
their brakes on at the shadow of a tree
I entered another world..

Murray Moulding



Murray Moulding has published fiction and poety in a number of magazines, online and in print. He lives in Denver and is an adjunct at Red Rocks Community College.