Here are some short untitled poems by Craig
Stieger.
You can write to him at
Dierdra@jps.net
These poems are all in one file.You can read them either by scrolling down or jumping to individual poems in the index.
fresh-cut almond branches
piled into heaps by the freeway,
twisted truck recaps
strewn on margins along Interstate 580
the sun a faint disk in fog:
Breakthrough a revelation!
blackbirds swimming over the rain-pooled earth.
array of low clouds undersides ablaze
in first light,
mustardblooms in the roadcuts.
(San Pablo to LA, 1/31/95)
In the sunsplashed
bougainvillea
Behind the low adobe palapas
Are the happy finches
That have sung there
For four hundred years
Posada C. 2/95
deep in the belly,
the white-light substrate that never was,
new, all blue,
flash of rabbit ears
broken pepsi bottles shine in the road curves,
mind of man,
old seafloor,
haze on haze--
Smoke pours from the town basurero
dog-teats at La Pinta hotel--
gravel, iron, diesel, dust,
green fishboat busted up.
Baja 2/95
Heaven can't be stormed,
It's entered by a sideroad
Far from brass tokens
And busy turnstiles
-Hawk Hill Road, Loleta CA
I do not say the browsers
At the Annual Antique Show
Are any less happy than me
Groping through the alder jungle
At the CockRobin levees--
I simply suggest there's money-happiness
& Soul-joy.
-Loleta, CA
Like getting stranded!
Out of blurrr
Roadside gravel turning underfoot,
Ten thousand miles
Of fine white road-sand
Strewn into berryvines,
Some with dirty snow
Some flattened crust of runover skunks
Non-ridership I've become intimate
With tiretrack universe
Of riverquartz crushed
Into new starry bliss,
deep at rest--
Like me!
-Colfax CA
Yellow rafts piled in the
pickup
In search of Feather River take-out
Plying dusty tiretracks through vast geometries
Of peach trees,
Back-lot stacks of metal ladders,
Flatbed truck plunged deep in vines
At the levees,
Or blue dome of busted pumps
Leaning on sheds-- gates to nowhere,
Old sycamores at the bend,
Long look of strawhat pickers
Following blind leads--
Concrete chunks for riprap,
Reaching the water
(Some clandestine fishcove known to few)
By chance.
-Live Oak,
No one stopping
No matter
Poor dumb wandering thumb
Sunshine on Spring grass
Fresh wind on rainpools
For an hour the world's a romance
Of steamvents in sunlight
Swirling from the bread plant
Who cares what's your heading
Here you are, free & inexplicable
Envy of so many
Envy of yourself!
The trucks blow by
A blue endless sky--
-Hitch pome #42,
Rolling white asphalt sealer
On the Quick Building roof
The empire of pigeons
Who swing low over the city
Splayed against the autumn sunlight
Clear views of Banner Mountain
Beyong a sweep of housetops
deep in the heart of
insubstance
I saw beneath all the tricks
Given the mind,
Blue air the same its always been,
eternity shines through-
A poor shabby man makes a living
Rolling roofgoop on separated seams
with a stick,
An old nest pulled from the downspout
A guy from the Everhart Hotel shouts
Pointing to his airnozzle
"why don't you use this- its the only way
To go"
crawling through office
windows
Negotiating ladder rungs with hands full,
I remember Aunt Sylvia
Who lived there long ago
Moved to misty Humboldt Rest Home--
An archaeology of the mind.
Old Earl totters on Harper St.
Spinning yarns to any who'll listen
Tells me of the Hobo camp
In the fifties across Eureka St.
Called "Guy's Gulch"
Where the ravine's overgrown now,
He wanted to run 'em out--
"I used to go over there
Fire my Smith & Wesson into the air
Just to liven things up"
back
After fifteen years together
MaryWynn & David are breaking up,
We arrive late with the truck
To move her stuff out
Up the hill from Columbus St.
Weeping she stands on a ladder
Handing glassware to her sister
A hushed warning from John
On the way in,
"Just don't say a fucking word."
Nothing is ever settled,
Lamps and vases in hand
On their way around the globe
Up the pink staircase
To their new digs on Lily Lane,
Shouts of "bastard!"
Echoed down the hall.
back
Moon rising-
A cold crown of raindrops
Brushing low pines
On the trail to 'Wa'tan'da
-Lake Vera
An old argument
Breaks out
Climbing Mt.Tam
Steering down log roads
A fine red dust
Floats through the cab
The yellow alder leaf
Swirls into the pool
With a little splash
copyright 1998 Craig Steiger
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