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
High summer the currents long romances etching the bay a breeze from an open window the mosquito netting sways how tangible, how solid a day can be anchored in memory slipping into archetype a seagull descends from the tallest pine a long long descent crisp and white as the ferry’s wake across deep water the bay stretching on as far as the horizon blue soporific the day expands demands expansion the tide goes on and […]
This weird spring light that fills the house with green bright through the curtains the lashings of rain the day surges then cedes a thrush sings its cool low call the mist comes down into the pines behind the woodshed the forest behind us growing shadowed and deep somewhere out there the newly woken bear is making its way along the edge of a dream
The bobcats came in close at dusk as the rain ebbed three, one following one after the other like easy conversation wild around the eyes unhurried, unworldly and for one single moment joy
the street ended in a cloud as did the day a damp forest lot made softer by mist some of it rain and some of it a gift a slip of the ephemeral given up by the earth
Cuetlaxochitl when not blighted or root-bound you are a lanky thing almost unrecognizable when green we know you only seasonally by your fiery bracts as a crimson attendant to the shortest days of winter which is another way to say the longest nights— here as always words are problematic we hear what is said but not what is omitted and accept cheery propagation without a second thought
rabbit at the yard edge still as stone fading into dusk awaiting something or outwaiting it— I wasn’t prepared for the silence here awaking suddenly to the crack of wood under duress holding my breath listening as the whole forest surged around me— there is no such thing as empty space I know this by how night swallows this house the knock-kneed pines and the flooded fields beyond them the very earth falling away the […]
a day under glass how to explain the air was thick but nothing happened the sun never even rose late geese flew low in an avian shorthand in a lusterless sky
OPTIONAL POETRY 