OPTIONAL POETRY

The days get shorter but don’t they feel longer. Tired. Such a gray little word. it hasn’t rained like this in September in ten years they said. Angry almost, angled and acute. The sloping shelters gave us no respite.

They blink their wings outside the window glass longing for the moon but how they’ll settle for less dragging dusty wings along as an afterthought a starless night the cold has a edge to it the dog keeps barking at nothing much just the house settling and us still awake with only a lamp on a beacon for moths the envy of hundreds of unreflecting eyes

Down in the valley I saw a white horse, I though to wish on it, but took too long thinking. The next pasture over was a flock of sheep, still in the distance, but I’m sure up close they were moving. Just how tired do you have to be to be unable to think of just one thing you want? Just how far will I need to drive before I admit that it’s possible to […]

{Packing} From the upstairs window half the view is gold; dried grass and Russian Thistle, what tumbleweeds are when they still have roots.  The other half is blue, pallid, or placid, it depends on your mood. On the neighbor’s roof five magpies are raising the alarm, chasing a flicker from the dried -out pine. A bee won’t leave well enough alone, a thin breeze comes to shake the spider’s lines, and when it comes down to it, letting go […]

It’s strange how little time is required before a presence is noticeably missed; all day on the boat fifty-one miles up-lake one waterfall the rest dried up a couple of flag stops, exchanging mail bags by pole, a six foot draw no excuse for risk a couple going backpacking dropped off at the trailhead and we all waved and waved because we’d never see them again

At the first mountain pass were pockets of breath clouds softening the void beyond the guardrails The second pass was still dry and hot but ice shone from the cliffs– No, just low sun caught on freshly exposed rock. A portent.

In the Arboretum, a cloud sat on the bridge, coda to a morning shower.  The day turned hot but the promise of rain stayed, waiting for some signal, indecipherable for all but it, but obviously there, this is a well -crafted comeback it’s been making.

He said the elbow gets thrown after the hips, the real power is in motion, and I could feel it in the hit. What a class, to catalogue our hardest points, detail vulnerabilities, elbows down, straighten that wrist, joints opening up like questions that should remain unasked.

There was an island. I’m not sure what all’s left after the hurricane, division the same as multiplying by fractions, loss masquerading as gain, but then again long before it hit we hiked over to the Chimney on the Bay side, a brick stack remained, the rest imagination— this wasn’t the first time, and won’t be the last. Things get displaced in a memory, I wonder if I could still trace a path from the […]

A large dark joy of evergreen forests, this stellar’s jay scrapes through the gutters, utters guttural croaks, tossing compacted bits of pine needles and moss to the deck boards below, ostensibly in search of food but I’ve always thought this bird is sort of a punk, with his shock black crest and hard-eyed stare he says he doesn’t give a damn, damn, damn, until I start to get close.