To a Young Girl
Watch out for those run-amuck kind of boys
with frayed jeans turned
toward stone pebbled hands rising
from the bottom of kelp beds
who pull you down, down,
much taken with your song
flowing red flecked
inside molten granite;

be on the look-out should one of them
promise a recording contract for all times,
and study the way you kick up sand
along a foaming shell's edge,
so moved so much to place
both your song and stride
inside a cedar box no matter
how your pitch changes.

But speak as I will, a woman
who has loved deeply if not well,
I know none of this
can mean anything until a visitor
stands beneath an awning of love,
who trawls you inside a net
until murk conceals
any thought of your wildness.

Talking to Bob Blues
Today I went out for a stroll
behind the condos where I live,
along Leona Canyon Trail
down by the water that's a sieve.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.

For all my memories of you
that I wear like a crocheted wrap,
until I reach the bench where I
sit and talk of this one and that.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.

And why our love flowed around me
without my sensing its warm touch,
how you always stayed far away,
but said how you loved me so much.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.

Now you listen to my questions,
without getting pushed out of shape,
a leaf drops from a tree, twirling,
then another, again its mate.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.