OPTIONAL POETRY

Are these the only choices? A list of footnotes, an orderly room, or the three AM bird and a glut of words, a feeling that something is due, something needs doing, a stomach ache, a hunger. Guilt. And which do I prefer? Strange, to miss missing. What good does it do to say: Death is a ebb tide, grief is a flow, neither has a clear beginning, or end. Everyone knows it. I could write […]

It’s muggy here, inviting sluggishness, there’s not enough boxes to pack anyway, decisions can be made in a week, a few days, there’s no need for reaching, grasping, the breeze moves me, that’s all. Outside the kid from upstairs is doing soccer drills, first touch and quibbling about fairness. Even here the grass is starting to yellow. His feet beat the ball like a drum, ready to put it in the net, the goal of […]

Last night brought the hills in close, late afternoon and they’re back in place. The lake looks deep, scored by whitecaps and racing boats. Finally the deck is in the shade, and it’s almost time to leave. Would that I could bottle a place, could stay to watch the bats drop out of a nearly empty sky just one more time, to stay up late and sit outside as the landscape gives off radiant heat […]

Mostly overcast, and how. Where have the colors gone, the spark of early summer giving way to heat-bleached tones. Or maybe it’s me, lost in dreams as deadlines approach, lured by drama on the pitch and grand scale emotions, like the moths to the lamp outside the garage door, to  bright lights, to easy escape, a vida em outras línguas, the eternal promise of somewhere else.

A Western skink, slunk along a rock with its tail like ink. I have never instinctively liked a reptile so much. Surreally blue its tail can be dropped for a neat escape. Of course, it fades with age into little more than a snake with tiny legs, but right now it is at odds with a drab landscape,a perfect work of art darting under the crawl space, a sensory affront yet altogether logical. 

Some broad-leafed bush interruptsthe path, uncut grass grown high  and gone to seed. Bindweed and briars– everything is reaching. The bridge up again, we wait. Half-packed, this apartment  begins to resemble howit looked when we moved in.   They dug a channel to connect the two lakes, but is there any markthat cannot be erased? Which reminds me thatI’ll have to patch and paint.  

After a choice, calm. Beyond the ropes, beyond the purview of the lifeguard, belonging inthe boundless. All roads lead to Rome.All water feels like home: We return and return and erasemotion with movement.  Intuition is not always rational, but neither is it irrational, the professor said.  No paths or routes here,courses set by wind and current, lines drawn and gone, my arms reciting a swimmer’s geometry,every angle opening in time with my breath.   

By the time we got to the pool the clouds were rolling in but the pool deck was still warm and left indentions on our skin as we sat and a little boy lost his net in the unheated water, the shallow end. Still too deep for him, he instead swung around the handrail with the glee of someone who has dropped something and has no intention of ever picking it up.

Getting ready to move, getting rid of most things, finding the little bits of life that got tucked in old books and stuck behind drawers. It’s been years, years, years since I smoked and I’ve found five lighters already. And umpteen train tickets to Creil, Clermont-de-l’Oise. A postcard never sent, half in French. Books with friends’ maiden names inscribed. A jolt from red ink, written by my grandmother some seventeen years ago, and a greeting card photo she […]