Hot air expands cold air contracts, but this cold snap has resembled the opposite. There’s so much space, now, for the sky to fill– it pools over the lake at sunset, over-saturated, splits the bare tree branches like a fine-toothed comb. Nothing about this suggests recession, even the early nights wait a little longer, gently sloping into dusks of pin-prick stars. The moon through the woods spills rolling shadows, making an ocean floor out of the […]
We lost the trail momentarily, it sunk into the spongy forest floor and opportunity arose between the wide-spaced trees, each gap an alluring possibility. Silence settled down, protected from shearing winds by a sheer rock face, only small vibrations, the distant clip clip of a carabiner, hinted at the climbers advancing insect-like up the wall. We went up, found our path beyond a slew of boulders and then, of course, saw the simpler way there; I was distracted by envy, […]
A line of demarkation where the sun cleared the ridge, the rest of the gardens in blue shade, iced over. To start we took down birdhouses stuck on high stilts, two had peat bricks, one studded with cold pebbly eggs, one with a petrified bird, hatching only half the battle– The compost frozen solid, we broke it up with garden forks, lifted, threw all piles together to prolong its warm center, to keep it going longer, decomposition still a marker of life […]
Deep in thought I missed the exit. The hatchback in front of me almost did the same. What a night, with its unreasonable coldness, reunion dinners, and unplanned diversions through childhood towns. Once I saw the church I knew exactly where I was: Still lost, just no longer in the temporal sense— I mean yes, a course can be corrected, but home— The point is, it isn’t entirely a place, and a longer drive just […]
Upstream, they’ve built gardens out of marshland, plots of leeks patrolled by bitterns, the water plate-glass flat, growing brackish in summer, précis: the color of indifference. In town, day-drinkers float in a sea of wicker and ashtrays and flat-faced dogs caught up in their leads. Beyond the quai the church bells toll time, here, another passing hour is only another train that’s gone. Somewhere farther up North, the river dumps out, in memory, the coast was always cold. Even on a sunny […]
I could go or I could stay or stay for now and later, go– these are the dangerous hours, they curl in like something clipped from its life-source, dead leaves, finger -nails– time seems to shorten and encircle but I wouldn’t quite say trap– it’s only a cage if I want to go out, which I might, but maybe not just yet.
It seems unfair to be tasked with motion when all of nature is still and frozen– the first true frost puts pallor on the cedar, slips a chill past the window, blatant warnings I would gladly head if only I could, instead of turning out into darkness ghosted by ice to go someplace I don’t want to be.
Do you remember when we went to Vicksburg? I barely do; it was during a photography phase, I saw only light and contrast. The negatives are somewhere, solo cannons, graceful oaks, field and sky the exact same value of gray when rendered in black and white. But these are Union men, I remember that much, were Union men, and a few Confederates they buried by mistake, and left, resigned to the politics of dirt. The […]
This time of year here my dreams turn to impossible mountains under their soft coatings, meters of snow making unreachable hidden places, everything is coming in now so I am going out, drawn into the thinning woods at receding hours to run a trail cloudy with mud, until my lungs seize up and my skin turns red from iced rain, I see no one else, not even birds are out, just me and the visible exhalations of breath, […]
A routine reversal, hard rain at three last night, then blackout silence with its own brand of guile– a blend of impatience and dread, both long disassociated from anything tangible, also hope and its dampener, prior observation. It seems impossible, the stillness of the night, and what propels me towards the kitchen in search of a glass is a thirst for motion, and not for water.
OPTIONAL POETRY 