December 18
There was freedom in those hills– we carried out a bit with us with wind-burnt faces and slightly wild gazes, but it fades so fast– this the hard part of a return, a sense of loss that these piles of rancid laundry do nothing to assuage.
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December 17
We slept in a graveyard of trees, a cradle of fire, formerly, and the outermost edge of the Southwest desert. The sun slipped away all afternoon as the wind picked up across the further steppes, traced mesas with their new dusting of snow– So we slept early and shallowly, as dreams of deer passed through camp towards the ice-clotted spring further on. Crystalline life, all that I could need, or want, breath or heart, here […]
December 11
Optional poetry is going on a non-optional vacation! Please feel free to peruse the archives, or check in next week for (hopefully) a slew of inspired new poems.
December 10
Strange thing, an allergy. An act of protest— Even at the molecular level I am in revolt. Punky. Itchy. It smacks a bit of betrayal— Why rise up in welts without clarity of position, or at least a list of demands? I say the unexplainable should at least be placatable— each drag of the nail is relief and regret— to say, pick a side, is only reasonable. Here, I’ll even draw the line.
December 9
I woke with a want for the ocean gray and desolate, with winter surf veiled under soft, steady rain. A desert won’t be the same, too still and open– the ocean closes in, relentlessly. But the stars, you say, they’ll be amazing– Yes, if only I wanted clarity, but the act of waking was enough. Now I want to be muffled, I want to be hidden, to watch the squall lines build and then swallow up the […]
December 8
You said sips of breath but I remembered gulps of air– I’m American, Rumi, a Texan to boot, but still I can do nuance, and know too how the throat tightens from peril, at giving all or giving up— I’m leaving soon for the desert, winter-stark and emptied, with nothing to find, or so I hope, so tired now of looking, but God help me, I can’t stop.
December 7
After all this talk of phases and phase changes, of dawns where the fog plays at being water, the air grown palpable, the most regular of things seeming reachy, not quite as we thought, as if caught in the moment when a dream is revealed as such– Yes, that plane will leave no matter what, this modern migration not accommodating of stragglers who stayed up North too long, outlasting the cold, floating past all sense of time and urgency, […]
December 6
The wind spent itself last night– it’s now so still, the noise from the far road drifts up from the valley like some distant ocean roar. The morning hesitates– the sun didn’t show, so must it go on? Nothing moves, not a single thing, no bird, no branch, not even the wind -slackened maples down the bank– the air is thick with deliberation.
December 5
This maple’s a mess but might have been worse there must have been some arborist come to cut back limbs to stumps, I don’t recall it but then the evidence was mostly hidden by leaves; it took a lot of wind to get to this point. I also had to ask if this gate has always been here? Walking through a door being a cue to forget, but still I wonder about how hard it is […]
December 4
i. Again with these nights like oceans they come in fast and strong— it’s easy to forget just how much of this earth is coastline— roughly the same distance as from here to the moon. ii. Distance first is cruel, and then kind, and then necessary— our closest star is alpha Centauri, and it isn’t even a star, but two, a visual binary, close, at 23 AUs, or 3,440,751,030 km, so take that as […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 