A flat five, the coldest night and in the black beyond the house, three owls. Is there a reward for hope? Or is necessity a mother? I do like the answer, here, have an owl, have owls, have stars, have cold air to see your breath, it’s not much but it is everything.
i. Morning snow is kind snow– clear sun, blue sky, where exactly does it come from? The best gifts have an air of mystery about them. ii. Last day– that gallows feel tempered by the brightness of the sun, care for flood warnings put off till tomorrow, maybe the rivers will recede by then. iii. At any given moment, a living thing is ahead or behind, I don’t think we are ever fully in one place, but jitter around a point in time […]
The clouds come low down the butte the tree line smeared blue the rest given up to sky. It may snow, but isn’t as cold as it looks, but maybe later on– the lake dead still, the dog won’t eat, nothing moves in the sagebrush, no birds, a lack that makes this quiet so disquieting– we all wait for something, it’s holding us up.
What happened to the owl, here? It used to perch on the corner of the roof above the back bedroom, and one summer there were three, if not a parliament, at least a party, a triangulation of HOO, Hoo, and hoo, the farthest just beyond the property line, and then there was that one that just went EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE the only animal sound I’ve been able to duplicate convincingly, and so we went back and forth, […]
[Sketch] A conservative palette is in place, here– the reeds, barn, hawk-on-the-wire, trestle, even the train, the same exact hue of rust. These are colors of decay, if limited in range, abundant in texture, rough snow in warming air, an off-white horse kneeling in a swampy pasture. It’s hard to keep a station in the foothills, but imagine how they run over the rocks, waves of words and songs getting lost, a few civilized fibers, a net in […]
It didn’t seem that windy but the lake showed otherwise– from inside the car it appeared to boil, a silent roil, a shaken -out sheet. Now here I hear the wind, but can’t see it whip the trees, everything’s coming in in pieces, seems like it’s coming apart at the seams.
The note said NOTE: this patient is deceased. Not a surprise, except again for how fast things happen, and how that fastness is exaggerated by stasis before, and I swear time is not entirely linear, more like swimming in a river, with depth and width and current to account for, running dry or out to the ocean where all water comes from, into breath then into air– it’s a cycle, it’s conserved, and this midday rain is […]
This morning’s out of spoons, as I didn’t start the dishes, the lump of laundry a culpable presence– I can hear geese squawk as they fly overhead, late, a less mundane reminder that time flies too fast, even on self-indulgently dull mornings.
The house is so quiet, I can almost hear the dread of tomorrow, outsized, and mostly undeserved. Every clear day here I marvel at how open things are– there’s a clarity in Winter. Or, less distractions, and so at night the walls come in closer and closer; I drink a little to breathe and think in three days, I’ll be halfway through the mountains, the best cure I know for claustrophobia masked by the onus of responsibility– to […]
Hazards on, I parked in the alley by the stairs to drop off a friend, had taken out the carseat no sooner than a Wrangler pulled up to park in the covered spot opposite, and couldn’t make the turn but tried with angry angles, revving, reversals— I left her at the elevator, rushed out, ready with a quip, a jokey treatise on chance and inopportune timing, but the driver cut me short with You see […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 