Slow dawn over the bridge a dark gray sky that dreams of other colors, softly, dully, mirrored in the window panes of flat-faced houses perched on hills that descend precipitously into the lake, so still this morning, no trace of movement, no speedboat wake, no curl of smoke, nothing to indicate life save the houselights, so warm and abstract at this distance— the bridge span then extends into a tunnel clear passage that obscures the […]
little bird waiting for the others ready for a fight against frozen nights the frost-laden dawns heavy mornings where the sun is loathe to rise I’m a little late to replace the feeder you wait on a bare branch still and small as a leaf for the pink glass globe of nectar of life itself snow begins to fall is it right to intervene or like all else is this kindness guilelessly but still something […]
can’t see the bay but there’s a river in the sky the world has gone gray without distinctions the ground slick with water the air thick with water traffic ground to a halt ribbons of cars suspended in motion above nothing a bridge is a structure or something that makes a connection this is an assumption and we’re getting nowhere fast
When does desire turn into greed what is an appropriate allotment of want unseasonably muggy in this forest water has cut a deep ravine beneath cedar boughs through carpets of moss it funnels and pools below perfunctory logs and drops again resisting direction this is the work it cannot be worked at I know this well and yet
The heart is not here, it can not, will not, be here— in all this rain, more than we’ve seen in several years. A rabbit darts through the overgrown lawn, now gone to seed, each blade a reproach. What hasn’t been done, what can not, will not. A sparrow ascends, becomes untethered. Motion is sometimes but not always distraction. The clouds oppress but containing is what breaks you. In their garden beds the radishes crack.
To wound the heart is to create it I felt it flit across the back of my hand before I saw it a fleeting shadow a large spider already gone before the stomach drop the untaught unease I saw another stationed on the orchid’s leathery leaf another where the garden abuts the foundation another tracing the fall line of the shower I leave them alone now some say age make you less tolerant […]
not everyone does evil, but everyone stands accused in the morning a dead spider curled up and dried out in a grave of sunlight and dust still small against the floorboards still mostly legs and still a bit off-putting but less without the menace of motion agency is what we fear the most
The cold is a good counselor, but it is cold. this is clear cold rain no mists in this forest just a deluge increasingly insistent saturated loam and inundant bridge— we walk on water in water one letter difference sure, easily dismissed but your feet still get wet— this the lesson everything is as it seems— an earthworm coiling in on itself a question answering a question the gray river silt the wind […]
the maple by the window put out leaves stretching down to the shrubs, out to the pines, and aside from all this rain the house is dead quiet, the living room sunken, deluged, submersed, and now something weighty lit on the roof but then took off when I went to look, and now some robin singing, unseen, calling out warnings or conveying relief, obscure, obscured and suffused with green
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
OPTIONAL POETRY 