In the distance the foghorn at the mouth of the Quillayute, unseen singing oh how the eyes deceive– like some mechanical dove or breath above a bottle, two hollow notes, one in constant falling. As the campfire dies smoke is held in close by the damp, the ocean lost in the whole of the night, but out there ships pass under a starless sky, and all that lies beyond them is tomorrow–
You’re making loaves of bread, now, same recipe, but each a different result, this one tasting like less but risen more. We drink in mild heat under the shade of the fruit trees, and wonder about that plant growing up the fence, with thumb-long thorns and translucent berries. It might be poisonous, you say, you’re going to pull it. A few plums, green, incipient, roll hard underfoot, not yet edible, and these, never to be. How sad, you say, it is, to be sad in Summer. The sky stays […]
Already summer lingers at the edges of night, staying light until late, the sun spills pink on the crown of mountain ranges that surround us. And how strange that until today I truly thought that restraint was the only way— it’s evenings like these that are designed to test it.
The sky too blue, it’s impossible to think. Along the fence the columbines bloom in neon hues, split into alien chambers, spurs. Along the road, banks of snow, no— cottonwood down, filling the air with fluff, an invitation to float, a call to subvert, a paean to the arbitrary– although they say that finding personal meaning in ordinary things is just one of many signs of delusion. Still, on the radio three different times, on […]
This a lunar phase, then, finding the sun too direct in its dealings. A dream— half-real, the cool hallway of a summer house, dim and still, with windows opened to night air. Given enough time, a fear of the dark is roundly displaced, the moon slakes some thirst that can’t be named, but comes awfully close to respite— Don’t we all have our tides? And the summer stars, they seem to swing lower, so tempting […]
Life-red, the stems of the maple sapling, the spinach that’s already bolted in the heat, unseasonable, unless we accept that a change has been made, summer starting earlier now, outdoors at least, where the green is frank, the crimson exposed, a leaf is a leaf, nothing less, nothing more.
Maybe it isn’t a need to leave or a need to stay, it’s a need for space– we’re going up that? was said, an ocean headland scramble, the trail a crease in the palm of upright sand, and the ocean, all and always, constant and eroding– which in itself implies time, these smooth flat stones a bit metaphysical, dark when drenched, laced white when dry, left by the tide amongst a thousand clacking barnacles, the comfort of […]
A reluctant return, a drag behind the motion, why? I still think of you now and again. A year, five, a loss of distinction, like water, difficult to define or bind. Is it because I’ve stopped trying, trusting blindly in gravity, sheer weight of will, pale and barren but exerting some pull? Another year condensed into a drop, the phase changes, properties too, but the laws are adhered to (but which? but whose?) If the night […]
Robber jay soft gray to belie an edge a storm of feathers around a head to take from a hand like that so flagrantly and to plan the thievery in pairs in silent skeletal trees rising below this scraggy summit against a bare sky no view no hint of the drop just mist bright like bleach and to live without fear is to be free yes unless you’re casting it off onto others
Thinking of a river, thinking of a lake, of water, cool and far from here, and of passage, if not arrival, of what comes after endings, and also beginnings, what’s beyond, what’s more– Thinking of the forest floor, gestalt of cast off needles and moss, how gracefully it accepts a weight, gives way but doesn’t break, and with each year how it grows– in place.
OPTIONAL POETRY 