1.
Motorhomes baking in the damp heat.
Old trailers up on blocks
with tiny windows covered by ragged curtains.
Retired boats under tarps in silent parking lots.
Vacant offices and condominiums.
A family in a puttering zodiac
prowls through the briny reeds
wedged between a department store
and a steakhouse.
Tractors and cranes stand frozen in awkward postures.
Piles of iron and wood lay about in no particular pattern.
Small tomato gardens prosper in thin wedges of soil
between slabs of concrete and pavement.

2.
Call out in praise of the elements.
Form a crown around this temporal form
and become a yellow jacket in the process of creating a soul.
Sleep through the bombing of Baghdad
and let the CIA annex your bedroom.
Search for your conscience in your dreams.
The cold truths of nature are a guaranteed redemption ticket.
The Universe shall be subject
to the rule of a single dandelion floating by your nose.
The Dharma will be brought forward in apocalyptic fashion
by a troop of wary chipmunks.
Let he who enters these doors become one suchness,
that very thusness, all voidness.

[San Francisco, 2003 — Concord, 2009.]

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Mel C. Thompson is a San Francisco Area poet, essayist, civil rights worker, and free speech advocate. His recent work has appeared in the East Bay Express, Salon.com, the Tokyo Progressive, The Poets From Hell Anthology of Bay Area Poets.