same color as peanut butter
spread thick on wheat toast,
looks up a nanosecond before I snap
the picture (He never misses cue.)
He slides an old Cherokee
hunting knife across his tongue,
savors nutted paste coating its blade.
Turquoise-on-silver Indian rings
adorn three large fingers.
His whispery baritone mesmerizes
every man in my Laurel Canyon
kitchen. He offers a practiced
Shaolin smile, expounds
the spiritual virtues of eating
peyote buttons.
Outside my A-frame house
a rafter-perched spotted owl
slings hoots at silent shadowy figures
moving among the twenty-foot
cannabis plants growing
like trees beneath the balcony.
Slit-eyed and deep-dimpled,
casting a magic spell, Kwai Chang
Caine charms us. “What I say is…”
(His entourage tribe snaps buds,
stuffs kilos in burlap bags, crawls
out of the canyon to a waiting van)
In character, Grasshopper executes
a barefoot exit, stage left, solemnly
proclaims “…If you can’t be the poet,
be the poem.”
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