Ripples Cross

Written while in San Francisco

Of hooves and horses, breathed by the heavy breathing grass,

bent by Alcatraz where rails run twice by the festival pavilion. 

The smaller yellow flowers croon toward the sun,

and a thousand ripples from somewhere else green, across rocks,

cross on concrete access, cross again under the Golden Gate,

and weave out to sea.

 

Of doors that must be caught, or rip the dirt hereafter,

thinking of the doors that closed,

with horses and three-cornered hats on the other side,  

horses whose nostrils billow expanding doom.

 

Warehouse fingers brush the ripples, 

hulls cleave the ripples,

shadows slide under the ripples,

as the sun and season's end slip into the notch of the Golden Gate,

and the Green Instant ripples in response, a last tube of hope

sent out under the concrete pedestal,

still crossed, by the heavy breathing trail

and the bent grass.