When the morning comes, it comes, scraping along like chalk or dread and with it dust and with it doubt that settles down on the most obvious of things. Of course there was nothing else to say. It looks like rain but it won’t rain, some bird repeats the same short call oblivious of the state of things, that this morning of all mornings has come so early and I can hardly breathe for it, let […]
Pythia, a word– In the garden todayand just now above the lake I saw cages of gnats,each individual insect both attractant and repellant,and this is how I frame my question: What will become of us? Or me. I’ve realized nowthat most things are mostly empty space,starting within our cells and reachinginto our speech.
I told her to try saltwater, it heals everything I’m about to soak my hand myself, having jammed it full of splinters while transplanting, never realizing it at the time I was so caught up in nasturtiums that volunteered themselves the pain only announced itself today, rubor, calor, dolor, tumor, always too much, always too little, always too early, and always too late.
You stepped into a dream; at least in sleep I can reach you. I got a splinter in my foot while gardening today but am now used to someone being under my skin. Heard a clap of thunder but the storm never rolled in. I’m unsure as to whether it will build up or move on, but tied the vines to their stakes, just in case. (Might you read between those lines of twine? Yes. You […]
I cannot deny the very sound of a slowing jet engine or the futuristic tone of the light rail train elicits some sort of dopamine response, just the thought of not being in one place provides a subconscious lift, even while waiting in an airport cell phone lot for a late arrival, I know that sooner than not I will leave again, still unsure if I am chased myself or giving chase, but that the […]
Them birds weren’t wrong– sometimes it’s best to relax and let a thermal carry you along We sat on the rooftop for the most of the night a bird-like perch a bird’s eye view of a neighborhood we both lived in years ago but never knew and as the talk turned to the past night settled over the tops of buildings, humid and thick a comforting weight draped like a blanket laying doubts to rest.
Already the heat pours in from the East, the recently-shorn willow hanging lank over dry grass I think I’ll have to leave the windows cracked as music from the apartment upstairs bleeds down, gentle and at odds with The Clash song that I am dancing to — we both have our ways of dealing with setbacks, I’ve learned from chatting after she’s put her kids to bed, she believes if she seeks she will find, asks, will receive, while […]
It’s a bargain I suppose, no need to swim, just float, no self, only part of the flow, encompassed by ocean, a greater whole, but today I am struck by the loneliness of the jellyfish. A man o’war is beautiful even washed ashore, fluorescing, dream-like, not of this world. But even in death it can’t be touched, is ever armed, never safe. More Midas than Medusa, it is never just exquisite, is always bubble fin and pain.
Behind green alder curtains the bay pretends to move abetted by the breeze and three gulls feigning stillness. Beneath, their slabby feet beat time against the current. It’s only a yacht that disturbs the flat placidity, churning the surface and showing depth but in turn hiding keel and ballast and obscuring its true weight. I’d forgotten how deep duplicity runs in the course of new acquaintance, with no more malice than a blade of grass– an edge nonetheless, couched among clover and stands of […]
Silent hill, sparse dove, an elbowing of swifts this morning colder than all the rest How do you feel? We ask with trepidation How deep into the hill this warren must go, masked they must think by dawn and tumbleweed no longer prey to a pill-round moon but I hear it now faint as bird wings and wind caught in sagebrush the night is stalking the day. Something kept pulling me from sleep your open […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 