A neap tide now— so jealous of the shore but just think of how much ocean never once touches land so long have I endured this thirst have hollowed out and cambered bones to search and search and if I waver it is only as a breaker holds itself fleetingly in disbelief before it falls like thunder, and arrives, abruptly, finally—
Another day breaks like a bone, dragging me along to my chagrin– another night is gone before it’s gone, at least that’s how it felt on a scale of one to ten, a ten. It doesn’t help, this hesitating sky. The air feels thin, too brittle to breathe in– this ossified blue, it does not move me to move from rest. These recalcitrant breaths do not support it.
I had hoped to watch the sky fill in with stars, particularly the obscure ones reserved for the backcountry but fell asleep too early, having spent all night waiting for night to fall. Even late, the mountains glowed, echoing the Northern sun ringing out across the old burn zone, new brush rallying up dry avalanche chutes– so very little snow this year. Slowly, the lake receded into suggestion; an owl called lowly, both begging the […]
Heart, heart, what did I say? Oh the moon got into you, the moon, the sky, the lake— and then you went and showed your face, boldly, no hesitancy, and so now, we wait— How vast, this night. And just like that I can finally admit, it isn’t that I fear your loss— what terrifies me most is that some day you may be right. Or some evening, sitting […]
Oh heart, heart, heart. I will bury you deep below and see what grows– I don’t want to watch you working, anymore. Go cool off in a cellar. Go improve with age. I cannot stand your incessant green chatter— Go and let the sweet dark earth take your edge off and when I dig you out again, I will freely offer up your balanced sapor to anyone who would partake— that is, to any one […]
This is no paint fleck peeling in the heat. It is the scalene wing of a moth adhering to the wall, and if I love anything at all it is this sort of thing: soft subversives, surrealities, the dozen moths like unblinking lids that I see now where I couldn’t, before. As if I would begrudge a lack of luster! I know too well, this friable nature, how a sharp wind can lift away its […]
Night comes late now and when it does a corner of horizon still glows like an ember and so the day lingers, reluctant to cede, and the moon waits to show its only face again, starting to wax or starting to wane, how weary to be a constant, let alone be in constant motion, if I were the moon I might want to cease, to disengage, to hide away until here below the oceans went […]
Now overcast and sultry, I miss the lake and its heart-stopping coldness. The pace of life adapts– the neighborhood cat sulks lazily away from the spray of the hose upon its limp leaf lair. A task for today: uproot the snarl of bleached pea-vines, shy spring no match for this heavy-handed weather. In the distance, now, what might have been thunder– and now it’s truly summer. I have no plans that can’t be changed so […]
Doldrum day. Such heat and listless air and a riot on the ascent– snow lilies, wild columbine, chickweed, yarrow, blessed lupine all strewn along the unsettled talus slope. Nearly a hundred in the shade, the salt on my skin a mockery of snow. Of all I carried up, you were by far the weightiest thought— the longest shadow, the most insistent thirst. For hours now I have held petals on my tongue, rivers in my […]
Ikebana on the bar besides orderly jars of loose-leaf tea– each photo that lines the exposed brick wall tilts out at six degrees. Even the mis -matched antique chairs are carefully curated (also holding life transiently) and oh what discipline to keep it neat– the art is restraint, what grace, what trust, leaving a thing open to suggestion–
OPTIONAL POETRY 