Woke to a breeze, thought
I must have carelessly left
a window open, here,
back in the city, but no,
everything is closed,
still, silent.
What a strange place
must exist just below
the surface of
consciousness,
that I could dream
up wind, and feel it.
I was just calling to say that I
am on fire. You told me
to rain more. Or was it,
try not to mind? Either
way the lines got crossed,
distance no comfort,
I’ll have to resort
to homing pigeons.
Or smoke signals,
more like.
To leave the window open,
to wake to the sound of the ocean,
here, there is peace. Even if
I still wake too early, still
can’t get back to sleep,
I can watch the sun rise,
sunrise a misnomer, really,
here the clouds just get brighter,
shades of gray between night
and day, and even before dawn
the spotlight on the neighbor’s
garage kept flashing on, motion
-sensored. Just after five I walked
down to the beach, discovered
why— A young buck stood
in the tall grass, startled
at sharing the morning, and not
afraid, or if he was afraid,
masking it well, with none
of the shell -shocked darting
of a roadside deer, no,
he had a velvety calm
and black eyes that met mine,
astonishingly close.
I had come over the hill just
as he raised his head,
neither of us sure if we should be
concerned, him, five points
big enough, and having
the higher ground,
me, deciding if I was
threatened, or threatening
as his eyes tracked me
moving slowly by,
his nostrils opening wide
to smell me, my breath
turning to vapor in the cold
as we stood there quite a while,
two souls in the dreamlike
dawn, the only two awake
for miles, both making careful
passage through the tall, tall grass.
I try to exist in two phases:
the barrier is constancy
of motion. It is not
for action I cut the plane
with a fiberglass blade,
not for momentum,
a current pulls along
in any state, even
without me,
the boat will float
even in pieces, even
beyond.
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.
The banks unseen
but sensed
as with sleek
mammals that slink
under the water,
back current,
eddies, telling slips
of the tongue.
Things sink:
cool air, wisps
of mist, glints
of eyes, watching,
reflective. Or are they
reflexive?
The later, the louder
the water. Or the latter.
Kept hitting snooze till a character
in my dream said it was time to go.
I don’t even know, hustling down
the hill, face full of sun. The sticker
bushes outside unkempt houses
lash out, try to draw blood.
Heat spurring growth
and anger, bikers constantly
squeezing by on the sidewalk.
On your left, on your left.
Your right to pass ends
where my thorns begin
(says the bramble.
Not me.)
I try to clean. They’re showing the space.
I’m strangely keen to impress
those who will take my place.
Let it be said, her mirrors shone.
It won’t be noticed.
I think of my mother,
lift the stain from the kitchen floor.
A fleck of toothpaste from the sink.
An errant leaf.
Erasing the history of the past
few weeks.Were that there
were a sponge
that could do more.
Is it a dog? A box? An aftershock?
Two things that follow. One
that contains. Or, constrains.
We’re out of packing tape again.
And dish soap. And everything.
I could draw a line through
the days on the calendar
but that might be too decisive
an action. They spill away,
next week the ocean,
the week after, fires. And every
night it’s too hot to sleep.
Adrift, adrift. The lake full of algae,
it clung to us as we walked out
of the water, turned our towels
green. Now a headache from too
much sun. Always a remainder,
these days. No even division,
always something to carry on.
The heat keeps rising.
Every mile here is named
for a creek or a canyon.
Looking for news on the fire,
now there’s two. It’s happened
before, homes becoming structures,
evacuation orders, an influx
of hotshots to hold the line.
By day, the smoke and the sun
make it hard to see the flames.
An acrid haze falls across
the lake, the helitack teams
scoop up buckets of water
to dump on the perimeter.
Closer though, the sky goes
orange, the hills turn black,
an irregular border advances,
spreading like malignancy.
And at night, as always,
there’s no denying things.
Dawns are ashy, the wind
picks up and the fire moves on,
a living thing.
The hungriest.
All at sea. Then the doldrums:
little wind and the heat starts
to cling. Sleep begets sleep,
the sprinkler exhausts itself
out beyond closed blinds,
the fan tries to coax a draft
across the room, window
to window, it clicks and turns
and clicks and turns back.
The sprinkler casts a sine wave
across the grass which soaks
it up like a dry-bristled brush,
but the sky stays blank.
OPTIONAL POETRY 