Life-red, the stems of the maple sapling, the spinach that’s already bolted in the heat, unseasonable, unless we accept that a change has been made, summer starting earlier now, outdoors at least, where the green is frank, the crimson exposed, a leaf is a leaf, nothing less, nothing more.
Maybe it isn’t a need to leave or a need to stay, it’s a need for space– we’re going up that? was said, an ocean headland scramble, the trail a crease in the palm of upright sand, and the ocean, all and always, constant and eroding– which in itself implies time, these smooth flat stones a bit metaphysical, dark when drenched, laced white when dry, left by the tide amongst a thousand clacking barnacles, the comfort of […]
A reluctant return, a drag behind the motion, why? I still think of you now and again. A year, five, a loss of distinction, like water, difficult to define or bind. Is it because I’ve stopped trying, trusting blindly in gravity, sheer weight of will, pale and barren but exerting some pull? Another year condensed into a drop, the phase changes, properties too, but the laws are adhered to (but which? but whose?) If the night […]
Robber jay soft gray to belie an edge a storm of feathers around a head to take from a hand like that so flagrantly and to plan the thievery in pairs in silent skeletal trees rising below this scraggy summit against a bare sky no view no hint of the drop just mist bright like bleach and to live without fear is to be free yes unless you’re casting it off onto others
Thinking of a river, thinking of a lake, of water, cool and far from here, and of passage, if not arrival, of what comes after endings, and also beginnings, what’s beyond, what’s more– Thinking of the forest floor, gestalt of cast off needles and moss, how gracefully it accepts a weight, gives way but doesn’t break, and with each year how it grows– in place.
Sometimes like a cataract the artist’s eye trained to see negative space and so used to starting with a blank but what else works that way really just try to pay a bill with possibility hyperopia more a defect than a marketable skill
In the distance the sky a turgid pewter gray to a lowering blue but here it was just a bit of wind and waiting– . Catatonic in the elevator the woman said how is your day going my husband just fell twelve feet but he’s going to be ok I think he’s in surgery now and asked for positive vibes . It never did thunder so I did instead but a peal or an appeal […]
Waking in a city of birds a scaffolding of songs scrapings in the gutter guttural divine calls beyond the open window half-closed curtains half -closed eyes the only way to know the ephemeral nothing quite present slow departure slow arrival this one beginning among many others and a motion not a place
Real sunsets now fanfares for the days now not slipping away unnoticed but lingering in fuchsia and gold denouements but still, endings . this isn’t a blue tint that would be too obvious a thing this is colorless odorless an uncanny world preserved plasticine– . I cannot seem to touch it
To fill a void one must first acknowledge it exists– and failing that expansion must go outward unbindable highway 2 at dawn a woman possessed but even at these new falls bigger than the last falls even with their most conclusive roar and electric moss rocks and clean air I still think here here’s where that hiker fell in and went over yes nature giving but yes nature taking away even at the lake the […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 