Moon Over Eucalyptus Trees

(from the moon series - Camino de Santiago edition)

Tomorrow we venture out of the city, outside
of the cement structures and rushing traffic
to where you can hear the birds sing
and the rustling of the eucalyptus leaves

on the trees. Tomorrow we find smaller towns,
we stay in smaller houses, more ramshackle
and better built, we drink more water and eat less
prepared food, we use our legs and leave wheels

behind, and slowly, as we venture into the unknown
we will find what we don’t know we don’t know,
we will cross bridges that aren’t even built,
we will use doors that yet to have handles

and we will not arrive because we don’t know
what our arrival looks like at all.

Moon Over the First Night

(from the moon series - Camino de Santiago edition)

sits on cement, drinks agua and has to pee
but waits, listens to the traffic, the different tongues,
says buenas noches and writes and feels the body,

the knees, the feet, knows the days to come,
the pain, the sustenance it’s going to take, remembers
the past, forgets the future, with belly full

and brain weary, asks the night its history,
its family, where were they during the war?
what side? wishes it could be with the sun,

without tasks, without revolution, just the sun
and the moon laying quietly on the beach in Salobreña
reading kafka en la Orilla del Mar and La Casa de Espiritu.

Moon Over Forgetting the Future

(part of the moon series)

It’s like cutting the strings tied to your finger tips
slowly pulling you along the road,

you spin and you turn
and you can’t remember where you were going

or you can’t forget or you just bumble along
slightly nauseated, reeling from disconnection.

When it stops there’s a moment
when you feel like you’re moving perfectly

in rhythm with the natural plan
and you look up at the yellow, almost full moon

smiling and the future vanishes
as if it never had a namee

and then you feel the money in your pocket
and the telephone rings.