OPTIONAL POETRY

The first barrier is waiting.
            Or is it wanting?

Every night
 is a river running
and I am a shadow,


a dry-sider trapped on the surface
of everything.

It’s not for momentum
I pull the blade;

a current pulls along 
in any state,
even without me


the boat will float,
even in pieces,

even 
beyond. The banks unseen
but sensed

as with sleek 
mammals
that slink

under the water with back currents,
eddies,

            telling slips 
of the tongue.
            What sinks?


Cool air, wisps of mist, glints 
of eyes,
watching, reflective.

            Or are they 
reflexive?

To exist in two phases,
the first barrier
is constancy of motion.

The later it gets, the louder 
the water.
             (Or is it the latter?)

The sky uneasy after thunder
last night, having gone

to bed angry, and the maple
leaves barely waver  

in the barely breeze.
I dreamed of someone

I barely knew, but family–
having never really had

a chance to talk, I threw
him a party, made him

a cake, still, the end
was fixed in place.

These leaves are summer-fat,
big as diner plates, obscuring

the view.  An outburst of rain
would be a relief about now.  

Dreaming, I argued about lines
on a map, locations of cities, 

quickest ways to get a place,
still, I woke before I got there, 

my slice still uneaten,
and going sticky in the heat.  

When I first heard,
I wanted to walk,
as usual, motion
the first barrier
and the first barrier
to fall.

Now, in my childhood
neighborhood I wonder
at the changes, how
things seem smaller,
except those I loved, 
and those I loved and lost
towering over all.

It’s wilder here,
and the wooded road 
is welcoming, all shadows
and dry pine until the brush
against a nettle, the stinging
immutable–

I was reaching for
blackberries, minding thorns
when I got into them, wanting
only the sun-warmed burst
of juice, and just look

how joy and grief spring up
together, this one perfect berry
enough to warrant the venture,
the harrowing hallowing, 

oh how I wish you
had felt this, too.

Here is where the steel
will buckle, here is where
the paint will lift.

Here, the half-closed
eyes of a lazy driver,
the thin red line

of his passenger’s lips,
pressed into silence
in the aftermath.

Here is the air, thick
as amber, the impact
now inevitable,

the last few seconds
fixing vectors in place,
lines bisecting lines

painted on asphalt
in cheery new yellow
that can only be trusted

as a guide to follow,
useless for keeping
others out.

Saltwater, watermelon,
and sunburns,

but not nearly
as brightly hued,

only imparting
a slight warmth

in the dark cool
of this room.

This,
August’s largess.

The lifeguards
shout at the boats

that pass too close
to shore,

slow dow! slow down!
It can’t ever last

this effortless state,
these ripest days,

this most seasoned
of seasons.

I peel a piece of bark
from the red Madrona tree,

set in the dry grass
before I leave.

It’s early enough that noise
is still the purview of the street,

no voices, only the exhaust
of a dryer vent, a crow’s

gutter-landing scrape,
the pangs of a parked car’s

engine settling.  I walk
the way I used to walk,

I used to live here,
on this street

where sparrows fight
over a crumb of bread.

Or maybe
they’re sharing it,

it’s hard to say.
Someone has defaced

every sign reading NO
anything with the addition

you can’t have nice things.
Well, sure, a bird

in the hand is worth
two in the bush,

but where does a bird
belong, now, really?

Working in the garden patch
the path under bright sun,
unable to see a thing–

it’s become a motif,
to hear bees tend
to the silvered borage,

feel the brush
of nasturtiums spilling
at the feet of trellised beans

as water pools in the rich
black dirt, needle-legged spiders
high-stepping the confluence–

So often in summer
I get a sense of return,
but without leaving;

or is it sun-blinded,
yet feeling as if I see
things more clearly?

It’s pleasant to bicker
over princes and landowners

and somewhat old-fashioned,
sweet as summer-dried hay:

things that are ours, that were
never ours, that were only ours–

you Russians say toska–
a word untranslatable
but so well-felt.

We may argue like old hens
and even this is comforting

but when I say Natasha
should never have ended
up with Pierre 

of course you agree,
though still preferring
Andrei to my Kostya.

Turned back at the mountain trailhead,
we climbed instead a nearby peak
and then instead broke left,

wrecked by the heat,
for an alpine lake, each set
of switchbacks a fresh slap,
the thinning treeline promising
almost there for miles
and then finally

the break
into a basin meadow
and a perfect still round
of glacial-hued water.

In it in a minute,
cold and clean, our reverie
broken only by two German women
who had hiked up with their purses,
sat down next to us, spoke
in hushed tones of Oregon
and The Grand Canyon, 

of other National Parks
thousands of miles away,
perhaps underestimating
the relative vastness
of the Western States.

A larval salamander
came to inspect my shadow
and then my toes,
external gills like a mane,
fearsome in his own way,
just not in scale,

and in the shadow of the Throne,
two peaks, some lesser mountain
the backcountry dwarfed us as well,

wilderness for days, full
of life but few if any people,

we wished we too could stay
a night, could stay for a while,
wondered at the change
that would take place

if after only hours
despite our packs
we felt immeasurably
smaller

and lighter.