There’s more than one way to start a fire, and more than one way for it not to take. You say, oh, you never know… but I’ve spent, cumulatively, days out in the cold warming soggy twigs and burning birch paper to get a spark to grow. Remember that house we found in Manzanita, right out of the 70s, all driftwood and macrame, with a wood -burning stove? You read while I fiddled with the damper, opened the draw. […]
Already the fires have started out East: an acre in Monitor, at least a thousand near Malaga.You could see the smoke for miles apparently, a bruise developing.Burn piles and dry brush, unheard of on this side wherewe live in practically a floating city; can’t go a mile without crossinga bridge, the peril here being that everything is built on filledland, layered on top of small personal histories, but at least when it gives way, eventually, we’ll all […]
This month does go on. Outside children scream at their mother, whatever it is they won’t do it. No, such an easy position to take, just digging into the ground. I should go to the garden today, see what new weeds have sprung from bare soil, if the blighted peas have finally flowered, if morning glory has overpowered all– that stealthy vine, it seems to grow in double-time relative to the leisurely pace of vegetables. I too know […]
Summer is child-like here; I want to please it. There’s still a chill as the sun pulls back, and somewhere in this house a fly is trapped; every thing drones on. I fall asleep on the couch and wake in sadness; a problem with leaving windows open– who knows what might get in?
This week, this heat has brought out little spiders; strange because they usually come in from the cold, and living near a lake in winter things do come: the rats that nested in the wall for months, growing complacent as my landlord. These spiders aren’t much for huddling, are zebra-striped acrobats abseiling from the ceiling, ready to jump, to hunt. Maybe it’s a subtle predatory bias that led me to trap the rats but let these spiders run free, […]
I’ve just realized — it’s the sound you hear when placing a shell to your ear. Or any similar object, really the rushing tides of blood inside us. There’s the draw;we’re mostly water and it goes where it will.
Some mornings exist in a void, so clear and calm I can hear the morning traffic rushing over the bridge, something like fast water or a sea breeze. What I would not give to see the ocean today. We all have our tides and mine has gone out for far too long. Even the smell of salt would act as balm for this gutting spring tide; uncovering the most confidential of tide pools, the most […]
Lamb, who made you? Heartlessness begets heartlessness– I’m sorry for sticking you with the bill. Even tygers have a conscience,usually pickled in beer, and egged on by the knowing smirks of waiters.
I guess that’s why they call it the blues, piped into the grocery store, a slow-up at the checkstand, I’ll miss my bus for sure. Oh Elton, I don’t really care, wandering the aisles and looking at cereal. The passage of people makes a place feel lonely, grocery stores and airports, especially at odd hours. The linoleum seems sad. I wish it didn’t — but it’s things like this that write the songs, not just […]
The 3 AM bird may not be real; I usually hear it after starting from a dream, this time lightning and thunder, but the brightest I could imagine, the most ear-cracking. I had to get up and walk around the darkened house, half-sure someone had tried to break in. Nothing. I had smelled smoke, saw sparks cascading from the roof before I woke. The 3 AM bird called again, what could it be saying at such […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 