Nearing year’s end the upstairs window frames the endless forest firs and cedars oscillating in the wind small storm, but the paper says get ready, something big is rolling in from the coast or maybe we are hurtling towards it this planet spins after all
Dog star, always there, in the dog days of summer, in these winter hours that pass like small lifetimes, secret, still, enclosed. I forget sometimes that being a tide involves wide margins, sea changes, rushing in and reticence in equal measure– never ever there but always moving towards it. Dog star, still there, waiting faithfully at the edge of the horizon. Not a portent. Not an omen, but maybe an answer to some unspoken longing.
// Berceuse // The small dog got her hackles up before the owl lit on the roof a small soft sound like a slide of dirt outside in the open stretch of night its compatriot hoo-ed and we argued over stars this is arcturus or is it mars? I was wrong; dry air, water in my eyes, the largesse of sky cradled in these dry grass hills– the town, the hour, everything stilled, even the tumult […]
I had hoped to watch the sky fill in with stars, particularly the obscure ones reserved for the backcountry but fell asleep too early, having spent all night waiting for night to fall. Even late, the mountains glowed, echoing the Northern sun ringing out across the old burn zone, new brush rallying up dry avalanche chutes– so very little snow this year. Slowly, the lake receded into suggestion; an owl called lowly, both begging the […]
Night comes late now and when it does a corner of horizon still glows like an ember and so the day lingers, reluctant to cede, and the moon waits to show its only face again, starting to wax or starting to wane, how weary to be a constant, let alone be in constant motion, if I were the moon I might want to cease, to disengage, to hide away until here below the oceans went […]
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
No quiero seguir siendo raíz en las tinieblas, vacilante, extendido, tiritando– Neruda, and I even then I wondered how much of you I could know. Do you remember? We walked in the snow and talked about the edge of the universe, how contrary to conjecture it is expanding faster than ever. Four years. Is it chance, or could you predict this? A softer scientist I see both suns– giver of life and vengeful destroyer– and would accept either, now: no […]
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 […]
Strange to say a starless night they’re all still up there god bear ladle monster man daughter strange to think they also live and die collapsing inward exploding out terribly constant in middle age (and strange how none go quite the same) and how we think we know them having given them names still wishing upon them strange how empty a place space is how far away these sparks the speed of light not speedy […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 