I’m not sure what these keys
unlock, clearly some door
unused by me but still there,
somewhere, funny to find
a thing and then feel loss
BEST and SCHLAGE
in the corner of the drawer
and all of the places,
and all of the places, and all of
the places that I’ll never go again
Camel, dromedary.
Sure, a poem but why?
Even taxonomy
is too pliant for you. Extinct
or extant. If a line drawn
in the sand is too soft then
what use are words
that build and fall
to gently say no desert
no life begins or ends
precisely. It is a collection
of inconstant and
inconsistent forms that slump
or shift at best against
what confines them. Naming
things is such an act.
Bactrians have one
hump. To be exact. You
have hurt me
with your indifference.
Today a hummingbird
hemming the courtyard
corners, hail from slate
skies, sun falling in
heavy bars, the crack
shot drop of a dead branch
in the distance, all this
wind, if not harbingers,
still precisely sounded tones,
probably worth noting
The camillas are all blooming now
from the bottom up
like they truly don’t care
this month still manages
to be unexpected
warmth or hailstorms
no middle ground
lessons abound here I’m sure
Skiing while a war breaks out
out of town, actually out
of the country, off the ground,
above the clouds, no cell
service, alone
and silent on the chairlift,
open parenthesis to other
people’s lives, and at the top
dispersing, choosing
easy or hard, fixed pistes,
indeterminate glades, all leading
back to the same place, down
I can drive back now without google maps
back home?
one struggles with the definition
Snow in the forecast
I can’t find my gloves
somewhere still unpacked
the endless boxes
stacked haphazardly
in the stale spare room
like the thoughts
of an insufficiently
occupied mind
half-open and malevolently
unfinished
winter solstice
the temperature dropping
And here I am, again
seeking the simplest solace
the flicker of pink
in an underwing
don’t know if you saw it
which tips me over
again, the elegant branching
of a dormant magnolia
like alveoli against
the darkening sky
but too brittle
for breath, also
but this illusion
of inertia
is beguiling
for once flight
seems frantic
or perhaps just out
of reach
to stay rooted exactly
here without even the weight
of a thought of returning
no movement no reckoning
that might be fine
All night the snow
sliding off the roof
the tattoo of freezing rain
yielding to sun at dawn
the deer came quietly
up in the yard
moving slowly
in the deep snow
and not too warily
the landscape softned
the foothills blanketed
everything settling
and coming down
to rest
On the other side of the pass
it doesn’t flatten out exactly
but without the trees
the horizon appears everywhere
lines of demarcation
and a sense of expansiveness
doing laps in our skinny skis
we heard coyotes yap in the distance
and the sun it set
just a little bit later
A sea change
sitting in the dark
listening to it rain
just how long
have I been holding
my breath?
OPTIONAL POETRY 