Sure, you’re singing strawberries,

now make those strawberries drip chocolate.

Your brain knows, but your mouth’s not

fast enough; make your face a fast fish,

fire beneath your breath, lifting

jet from runway, full speed rising together

your harmonies carve a shape in air,

form a fold in the universe of sound,

not only channel the voices of sun and moon

but all the spheres, so when you sing

stars dance across your faces of the sky.

          from Miracle Shine, previously published in Eleven Blue Strings

Mon, 20 May 2013 01:00:56 -0400

To be a child again, knowing books change the world. Running up the narrow stairs into soft, yellow light of the old Carnegie branch, and there they are, walls of them. Librarian smiles at Dad and me, kid exchanging finished stack for more.

Now I read titles of courses I will never get to take: The Nature of Culture; Form, Space, Vision; Primate Behavior. If I took all three at once, could I tell new stories, speak new tongues, or just appear an educated gibbon at art opening in midtown?

Clicking through the college catalog I see him - General Ed lurking deep inside, chanting the secret names of what we hope to come to understand: The Joy of Garbage, Urban Geography, Visualization, and he winks at us. What comes from all this work?

Community Engagement, Children and Television, The List Poem: No, not “knowing,” really, but still we climb towards that warm & yellow light.

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:14:16 -0400

Bob with Pete Gealey, bass

May 25 at Sacramento Music Festival, Calif. State Railroad Museum, 2:45 pm. $10 Railroad Museum admission gets you into the full Poetry and Music show from 1 to 5pm, featuring Laura Martin, ElectroPoeticCoffee, Vincent Kobelt and Fo’Shang, Shawn Pittard and Clemon Charles, and William O’Daly with Louis V. Johnson.

Pete Gealey will also be joining Bob at the  May 27 book release party at SPC as well! Free, 7pm.

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:42:45 -0400

Come to celebrate Bob’s first full-length collection of poems on May 27, 2013 at the Sacramento Poetry Center.

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:46:00 -0400

1

yellow leaves fall
form wide circles around each tree
and the circles overlap
to form this path we walk:
one wide fabric of color

2 

years sifting sunlight, bay tree scent

fills coastward climb, spins against the coil:

leaves and light, laurelling

safe for now in filtered shade

3

south on levee dirt road
crows on and off cottonwoods
half-filled irrigation ditches
far enough from freeway noise

warm and dusty in late fall
the whole flat valley, smell of grain
cropduster off toward Davis diving and rising
turning to dive again.

it almost got quiet and I
slowed down enough
to notice what I forget to.

Quinton took things
in stride, breathing alfalfa air
the floodplain feeds, turning from
a walk in silence, remembering.

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:14:00 -0400