unvoiced words cast as shadows or wilting in the face of the predictable response or echoes of echoes and all this weary smoke settling over the city towers and spires the blood speck sun thirst is nameable but this is not . the cloud distinctly a face suspended over the far valley blowing out a bellicose wind and from the summit we watched smoke churning up like smoke there’s nothing else so plain-spoken yet indirect […]
a thirst and that way weariness rests just outside the eyes- another rainless day sun on green glass oh the height of it all a seagull seems to fly low here the trees seem out of place set pieces this room is mostly window and open space but some things you just can’t fake this song progresses through common chords characterize everything as a wait it sure doesn’t feel like arrival nobody’s fault but mine […]
almost calm this not yet night a house it settles but a city it calls and calls like some stray cat enamored by want and measuring out the confines of its alleys
tannin of disappointment how it clings like a soft bitter leaf stains an evening seeps into a day full sun solstice even here longest day and longest shadows cast a stone and ripples cast a doubt and the breeze might not even be real
a day of too many quiet rooms no balm for it words on a page too linear the page too square all coming back to right angles, edges, each a precipice– if potential was always positive a heart would not sink
back from the ocean city night sounds windows open to let the night in what else to say it hums with some energy not unlike a tide changing also gradually but impossible to refute not unlike this sunburn or how much I’m missing you
this night is loud the house continually settling a clatter of stars or do they ring out like fallen coins to steal a moment convincingly there can be no hesitation a minute must be occupied completely by nothing at all a low jet-plane and thoughts intrude and now it is just late dawn coming head-on from miles away
the way a summer day lingers, and the night, too a golden thing won’t go– some minutes are a life of possibility, the breeze shakes the shades and sunbeams shift on the floor like seagrass underwater, ephemeral, summer, how many ways it could go, or stay, first cool of evening, but still light out, birdcall and voices from afar, and summer fruit, the lazy sweetness of it all, each hour rising up like super-heated air, […]
Late late morning a ripple on the lake a standing wave or complicated wake two lizards sunning themselves and not much else to say, calm and soft here, East of the mountains I watch descents: parasails, quails the crescent day moon the onerous ray of sun and spare a thought for yours: did your crampons bite? did the pack give way? Alone in the shade of static, fixed hills, I wonder, and wait.
and then a silence becomes unspeakable spring rain gentle except for when it is not complacency split up by unusual intermissions damp green and watery themes the creek up the lake spilling its bounds each leaf recoiling back to how it was or wasn’t can this transition be considered status quo how a season always goes transience in object definitions always a before even these mountains and the expectation of after breaths collect in cool […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 