I missed the exit and the other exit gathering the night around me the moon the city lights spilling out beyond the interstate I didn’t care even as the road narrowed into farmland loam unseen but leaching out its mineral scent no stars country dark I had nowhere and now have nowhere to be except with you what other destination is there?
Earlier today I was watching sugar ants make an easy ingress through the open screen door, like spilt beads from a split necklace, recovering themselves, bit by amber bit, making something new but not unexpected– The form reveals itself. Or so we would hope, tomorrow marking a closer return to our beginning– what animal sense has brought us back here? A return being at heart the same as an ending– a prologue in other words
High cirrus a wisp of a whisper I play at carelessness– Yes a cloud seems to float but I bet it feels laden when compared to effortless air– This is not to say that you are a burden (but I’d suffer it if you were)
The second day of summer the air a bit acrid the day moon suspended like a half-formed thought– a little wind now and it might go out completely a little wind now it might incite a spark
Another day, another astrophysicist. This one says she listens to the stars– everything out there emitting radio waves, she knows them by their frequencies, tuning the dial, different things come in– births, deaths, black holes, quasars– and never saying the same thing twice, not quite, she tells me this often is overlooked, perhaps due in part to our unconscious desire to make the things we love immutable
How easily you stepped into my dreams, how easy a presence, although dreams are at best the first pass of an impressionist– colors made sentient, but poor predictors– Nonetheless waking today I feel the urge to fling open the windows and fling open doors and throw a convocation for all those cautious birds, saying this is mine, my treasure, my new call to call! In other words, to coat this fragile thing in brashness, safeguarding easily passing as an act of creation– […]
It rained last night, sad to have missed it– the porch boards blotched a deeper hue, the only hint it happened, everything else dry, the sky that white -blue color of a bit lip, tight-curled knuckles, afraid to let another drop spill out.
These minutes settle like pollen, or dust– imperceptible accrual. A bird sings the same song, over and over and over, you’d think fluency with immersion, but no, some things are inscrutable. Morning cedes with the ease of a breeze, enviably. Recondite self, what is this ache? Hope is only a stop-gap, always traded on arrival, here, now loosen your fingers, now show some grace–
Everything is bolting in the heat, sending up last gasps, small anxious leaves, scattered and flowering, even the greens in the shadiest bed giving in to reflex– panic, unbecoming, I sit in late morning’s near silence– a button strikes in the washing machine, the dog is gnashing her fur with her teeth, a jet passes low– tail, contrail, it’s motion that gives us all away– Unmoved, I eat a mealy peach.
(After Basho) Even on this perfect afternoon, I long for summer— a complicated thirst. An empty glass is a maw, a full glass, a vessel, and this view of half-moon sails clipping across cobalt water is so generously poured out, it’s no wonder I feel hollow.
OPTIONAL POETRY 