the horses abandon their paddock for higher ground it’s really coming down now constant drubbing insistent as a heartbeat the ground is at its limit it might be fatalism to say if it does, it does if it will, it will, but each raindrop hammers home its point with relative accuracy the valley road will flood soon the sky reflected back in pools of muddy glass
at dawn, pearls of rain strung through the bare maple barely a dawn the sky going from wet slate to something slightly lighter a storm today the trees grow discrete but otherwise it passes intangibly a promising new acquaintance I will never see again
a long drive on a short winter day land masses stayed by bridge after bridge the on ramps airy and undulatory and backlit by a low blinding sun the waterways also meandering but with less precision a few straggling salmon follow gradients from the bay up into creeks still swollen from rain and redefining their banks an eagle roosts by the end of the freeway in flight all these bisecting paths are rendered flat as […]
this house sleeps, dreams in the wild night alchemy the tree tops dissolve the sky a soft black no stars, the moon frost on bone, these windows become mirrors, impressions, blurry domesticity, low incandescence, what passes outside passes unknown— until a coyote trips the floodlight ambling an arm’s reach from the house betrayed by motion he continues in motion brindled black, dog sure— by day the hares and towhees freeze when they sense eyes upon […]
Winter is here now armoring the trees with small blades of frost the silence absolute the fog emphatic the Douglas squirrel traversing the birch branch seems unnatural the hours pass dreamlike with an elasticity of time there is hardly any snow no horizon at all the sky low and matte the inside of an eggshell and here we wait
OPTIONAL POETRY 