OPTIONAL POETRY

Them birds weren’t wrong– sometimes it’s best to relax and let a thermal carry you along We sat on the rooftop for the most of the night a bird-like perch a bird’s eye view of a neighborhood we both lived in years ago but never knew and as the talk turned to the past night settled over the tops of buildings, humid and thick a comforting weight draped like a blanket laying doubts to rest.

Already the heat pours in from the East, the recently-shorn willow hanging lank over dry grass I think I’ll have to leave the windows cracked as music from the apartment upstairs bleeds down, gentle and at odds with The Clash song that I am dancing to —   we both have our ways of dealing with setbacks, I’ve learned from chatting after she’s put her kids to bed, she believes if she seeks she will find, asks, will receive, while […]

It’s a bargain I suppose, no need to swim, just float, no self, only part of the flow, encompassed by ocean, a greater whole, but today I am struck by the loneliness of the jellyfish. A man o’war is beautiful even washed ashore, fluorescing, dream-like, not of this world. But even in death it can’t be touched, is ever armed, never safe. More Midas than Medusa, it is never just exquisite, is always bubble fin and pain.    

Behind green alder curtains the bay pretends to move abetted by the breeze and three gulls feigning stillness. Beneath, their slabby feet beat time against the current. It’s only a yacht that disturbs the flat placidity, churning the surface and showing depth but in turn hiding keel and ballast and obscuring its true weight. I’d forgotten how deep duplicity runs  in the course of new acquaintance, with no more malice than a blade of grass– an edge nonetheless, couched among clover and stands of […]

Silent hill, sparse dove, an elbowing of swifts this morning colder than all the rest How do you feel? We ask with trepidation How deep into the hill this warren must go, masked they must think by dawn and tumbleweed no longer prey to a pill-round moon but I hear it now faint as bird wings and wind caught in sagebrush the night is stalking the day. Something kept pulling me from sleep your open […]

You explained: If this stadium is an atom the nucleus is a speck on the pitcher’s mound and we are the orbiting electrons. Do I repel you? Having made some comment about the lunar effect, admittedly unscientific, a bit too loony. You don’t believe in the stars, well neither do I really, but you must agree the moon exerts a pull, or, we’ve really got a hold on it. Another pop fly. I was talking […]

Hours from the ocean and yet I am the tide, longing for return and mourning slack. I am a draft that haunts this house, measuring hours by rooms, minutes by pace, and prone to sudden rains. I am not myself but am a force of nature, the orchard is not an orchard but is a sea of white and fragrant pink, millions of blossoms unfurling overnight to comfort me  with apples for I am sick, sick, sick of love.

Hours from the ocean and yet I am the tide, longing for return and mourning slack. I am a draft that haunts this house, measuring hours by rooms, and prone to sudden rains. I am not myself but am a force of nature, led to migrate by degree latitude, percentage of sun. The orchard is a sea of white now and pale pink, millions of blossoms unfurling overnight to comfort me with apples for I am […]

A stormy morning, just outside of Portland – the sky contused, the trees and grass electric as the wind picks up. Windows open. I have known too many of these mornings, alone and quiet save for the disinterested chattering of birds. The things with feathers. And nothing, nothing is crueler than hope. These birds do not sing to warm a soul, are unabashed by downpours, give zero fucks about the storm. They sing because they are […]