You ask every day now what is distance I point to the mountain white and still as an etching foreshortened and rising as if from the lake you are now gleaning that words are slippery fish two-faced wide-eyed dull or gleaming depending on which way the scales lie
A quiet morning, with bird, and the slow exhale of the furnace. The fire stutter starts, we all come to life. Maybe today they will find the new feeder, or the popcorn we scattered, grown soft in the rain. The wild here is more wild than before, not easily enticed. Maybe we will find what the coyotes caught last night, unholy screams, then, unnerving silence. Milk clouds this tea, a leaf sinks, then rises, like […]
a short sunbreak barely an hour otherwise it is still save for water falling from branch to boulder say an echo of the prior rain the stone worn smooth from years of the same year’s end time is somehow more perceptible say the way a sunbeam is caught in low-lying mist the way memories return to fill empty space the garlic has sent up new green shoots like swords, or say tongues–
Nearing year’s end the upstairs window frames the endless forest firs and cedars oscillating in the wind small storm, but the paper says get ready, something big is rolling in from the coast or maybe we are hurtling towards it this planet spins after all
Christmas Eve among the pelagic is not un-festive, the ruby rockfish striped with silver tinsel scales, the oystercatcher’s scarlet beak, in the tropical house the leopard ray slides down the sides of its acrylic tank they aren’t sure why, it must feel nice, belly white as snow, one enormous single flake, falling and rising comfort and joy, comfort and joy
Given the rarity of sun we can forgive its low insistent exuberance flooding our eyes from all directions the woodpeckers chatter each call a rapid succession of questions and answers at the edge of this forest almost everything is soft a maze of damp boughs and spongey loam sunbeams that pool honey on the moss the fur of the coyote laid out by the ditch its legs outreached and stiff as branches
There is a stretch of road that often for a moment seems incongruent utterly unfamiliar my car passing through some existential plane— where am I? have I gone the wrong way? the lanes go on eternally in the dark arcade the trees the same soft suggestions by the roadside only the exit signs hard proof of place glowing in the headlights delimiting space
a short eulogy for the shortest day of the year— it rained construction went on indomitably across from the hospital inchoate orderliness enviable what a job to fix something fixable
Sending cards to cdmx it may be spring when they finally arrive if they make it at all this is not an act of faith— when was it we were last there? the sun rising over the tarmac ripe as papaya that long airport hall full of money changers mostly empty at that hour how did we get to Erica’s? how did we get anywhere? the physics of memory is the same as in dreams […]
the night cracks open at four in the morning a tree fell out back gusts push and press against the house the windows protest a tree is still falling, or maybe just a large branch the absolute black distorts perception— a shot and its retort as the thing comes down sharp, profane, maybe more than one thing maybe the night itself scaffolding collapsing the rush of wind obscures any easy answer
OPTIONAL POETRY 