All night the snow sliding off the roof the tattoo of freezing rain yielding to sun at dawn the deer came quietly up in the yard moving slowly in the deep snow and not too warily the landscape softned the foothills blanketed everything settling and coming down to rest
On the other side of the pass it doesn’t flatten out exactly but without the trees the horizon appears everywhere lines of demarcation and a sense of expansiveness doing laps in our skinny skis we heard coyotes yap in the distance and the sun it set just a little bit later
A sea change sitting in the dark listening to it rain just how long have I been holding my breath?
A different kind of rain today, static, and a peculiar light cast up from the bay filtering through damp streets steel and glass a very high tide today they said- knowing what is beneath, now obscured, I can imagine it more clearly, vividly if less realistically, a strange tradeoff, and not an unwelcome one
More rain, and drowsy expectation— soon, something will happen, plans have been made, action will be taken, just not yet— the world outside remains discrete, drops on the glass each a microcosm of its own
Flood warning even the hills get treacherous side streets and alleys like tributaries water finds the fastest way or makes a way— before I would have made something of this, or tried—- now I just watch some guy out in the thick of it shouting and throwing rocks at the cars that pass by
We missed the countdown a TV delay screaming outside and the belated realization a ten second handicap on eating our grapes
OPTIONAL POETRY 