Exactly when does it cease to be night and qualify as dawn? What percentage of light? There are very few real endings and even those we only recognize well well after the fact, hidden as they are in obscure actions, the turn onto a road, or emptying a glass.
The road paved in ice and that damn owl playing hopscotch on the roof all night. The room too warm, the smell of snow came in a cracked window at three, such an unbecoming hour, and it seems there will never be enough– I mean, there isn’t a leap or reach that isn’t preface to a landing.
Snow, flat cold, a perfect veiling of place, except in the midmorning sun by the rabbit run it’s melting a bit, still there may be more to come and for once I long for it, for enforced simplicity and stillness, how softly and subtly it comes down to transform the landscape even as I watch.
Insistent owl at dawn– clouded, it may snow, but it’s undecided, still dumping in the mountains, and somewhere, someone is traveling someplace else.
Quick cold when the sun fell behind the butte, but this day was longer than the last, and so will tomorrow and the day after that. A pink-gold glow on distant snow– not many people came out this far this year, the road is quiet and distant lights reflect off the lake, so warmly, a small city, now, under a waxing crescent– still a coyote slinks down the street, hills and culverts enough of a […]
The unbelievable brightness of snow, coming from low gray the mountain pass was a different day set inside a bleaker one. Only thirty minutes to make it through the graphic reach of trees, the whole wide scene a black and white book for new born eyes, awe displacing fear entirely, for a moment the hard rime, the steep grade descent, forgotten, lost in the story that ends with: even in all this there’s a kernel […]
It’s harder to wrap up this year, odd angles, the paper sliding, the tape run out– In all seriousness, there’s less of a veneer this time, things are very much what they seem to be, not good. Of course, this may be because I didn’t decorate, about to leave, again, and need to pack and mail those bills already– I think instead I’ll go run through the forest and try to smell the evergreens, under […]
i. The longest night of the year was not so long when bridged by sleep, all kinds, dreams nested in dreams like Russian dolls, brightly-hued, drenched in lacquer, but nothing in the center– there are things the mind keeps from us. ii. Which isn’t to say I don’t still wake often– the newspaper delivered in its arc and impact, or no sound at all but with a different tenor of silence, or white noise, […]
i. We told Blondie we’d see her next time we came back, red rock dreaming before we even left, but maybe masked by rueing her cooking– lead-bellied all the way to Vegas. ii. Muted, it presented a different face, not dry, or running full and sudden, I didn’t know what to expect– one of the key precursors for loving. iii. Loss, too. Leaving gets under your skin more than anything– I picked red […]
What settles? You. A draft. The foundation of a house. This wind picks up but never gets alarming. And I can’t tell disappointment from lack of inertia, as they’re both so drab and gray and boring.
OPTIONAL POETRY 