Light lifted me briefly
to the bands of color
my eyes could not discern.
A flock of birds
gently flew around
the impediment I made
in the sky.
Whenever fear
attempted to sink me
I revisited loving you.
As clouds arrived
their light set me down
on a patch of earth
thick with tracks.
This levitation lasted
long enough
for the earth
to rotate me
seventeen point two-nine miles
from my starting place.
copyright © 2022 Kenneth P. Gurney
I am your rainy incident
that catches you
without an umbrella
so you order a second
double espresso
and write
your autobiography
in a chicken scratch code
on a brown napkin
sending all of your emotions
out to right field
during the World Series
with the hypothesis
your emotions
had one game-saving
over-the-wall catch
left in its marrow
before a field
of thistle seedpods
burst open
like clouds
that cause delay.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
Paul did not remember
what he told Dora
of his gospel of terror
and that he
is merely a reflection
of the clouds
on the river’s surface.
He remembers
how he and Dora
flapped their arms
and laughed
until tears
squeezed out
of their eyes
under the cedar waxwings
in the hawthorn tree.
He thinks about
how the world looks
from the river bottom
eyes open looking up
through the
tannin curtain
at the passing clouds
and the blackbirds
in the cattails.
It explains
that look
he often wears
and how his logic
has this sense
of erasure
as the pebble
strikes the surface
and ripples
through the clouds.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
I noticed the ground never felt a drop.
The dictionary has a word to describe that phenomena
but I am at a loss for its first syllable.
I wondered if the parched vegetation
found this funny and laughed
with the reassembling clouds.
Heat rose from the granite.
It bent the air and formed its own
dry rainbows with dust.
It is silly of me to bicycle old US highways
across the continental divide
under such conditions,
but nothing much will change
until next month and I wish
to be home in Albuquerque come Tuesday.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
Umflop 