We passed a black dog around the hairpin bend and going up it then descended as if to follow us, its owner having to call and call. How rapt those brown eyes, the wet nose on the scents about us. And how apt, as whatever this is that is trailing me these days, even up these trails, it is certainly dogged.
How much harder to write the open days– calm at dawn the morning a breeze, all windows open to prepare for later heat. The details are kind: Young maples have filled the silence between the pines with undulating green, you’d never guess just how the bank drops off– Down in the valley children scream in play, two girls wailing like teakettles, like birds of prey, and on the porch, lines of silk spark in succession — […]
Does this feel like water? Overflowing banks, a drought, both demonstrate a marked loss of control– Or, the ghost of steam, water giving up its form to take on another, but still remaining water– (maybe fire then is more apt– it isn’t, then it is, until it burns itself out.)
Whatever this is I’m attributing to the moon it’s probably due to wine or the hour, empty things exerting more pull, being more of a lure than those that are full— . It’s late, the small dog’s snore belying its size: or, what seemed large is small, or, what is small, seemed large.
Oh Keats it’s late and there’s no bright star no stars at all strange given the clear day earlier but life has its ways of imposing even lighter than air it still gets in the way I know that you know this how some nights can arrive like an unwelcome guest and with such limitless depth it keeps one awake just as easily as light would
In the distance the foghorn at the mouth of the Quillayute, unseen singing oh how the eyes deceive– like some mechanical dove or breath above a bottle, two hollow notes, one in constant falling. As the campfire dies smoke is held in close by the damp, the ocean lost in the whole of the night, but out there ships pass under a starless sky, and all that lies beyond them is tomorrow–
You’re making loaves of bread, now, same recipe, but each a different result, this one tasting like less but risen more. We drink in mild heat under the shade of the fruit trees, and wonder about that plant growing up the fence, with thumb-long thorns and translucent berries. It might be poisonous, you say, you’re going to pull it. A few plums, green, incipient, roll hard underfoot, not yet edible, and these, never to be. How sad, you say, it is, to be sad in Summer. The sky stays […]
Already summer lingers at the edges of night, staying light until late, the sun spills pink on the crown of mountain ranges that surround us. And how strange that until today I truly thought that restraint was the only way— it’s evenings like these that are designed to test it.
The sky too blue, it’s impossible to think. Along the fence the columbines bloom in neon hues, split into alien chambers, spurs. Along the road, banks of snow, no— cottonwood down, filling the air with fluff, an invitation to float, a call to subvert, a paean to the arbitrary– although they say that finding personal meaning in ordinary things is just one of many signs of delusion. Still, on the radio three different times, on […]
This a lunar phase, then, finding the sun too direct in its dealings. A dream— half-real, the cool hallway of a summer house, dim and still, with windows opened to night air. Given enough time, a fear of the dark is roundly displaced, the moon slakes some thirst that can’t be named, but comes awfully close to respite— Don’t we all have our tides? And the summer stars, they seem to swing lower, so tempting […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 