Kent Taylor

Nick Gabaldon

wake

- for Nick Gabaldon,
pioneering waterman

stuck
in life

at a loss
for words
or witnesses

drifting back
to the day
you first
paddled
up the coast
from Santa Monica
to surf
Malibu

years later
your oracular
poem
played out there

light still
warps
where you hit
the pier

Cleveland Dreams....

http://tribes.tribe.net/clevelanddreams

chasing Helen

I measure morphine
and Dilaudid
and hope
greed makes cancer
careless enough
to drop the leash
that pulls you away

you get lost
without moving
as the labyrinth
shifts
inside your head
breaking the thread
of my touch

you've become
unbearably beautiful
but like a bird
crossing the sun
blinding
to follow

~ kent taylor

not quite Janine

Einstein
couldn't chart
your passage

fate brings you to earth
not gravity

no one
at fifteen
is subject to
the laws of physics

you fade
in and out
as the dimensions
of the known world
struggle
to accommodate you

the trick
is to cast
what's indistinct
far enough ahead
to be recognizable
when you catch up

remains to be seen

we disappear
from the ground
up
cut off
by the curvature
of the earth

empty nooses
pass for
halos
as a coin
flipped
at sunset
catches
the last ray
of light


~kent taylor