OPTIONAL POETRY

Now it maddens me not to know what bird is making the call in the dark.  A little knowledge making clear all that I don’t know. What did it say? Why did it stop? And now begins again; what is the story? Fog before sunrise electric and eerie. I look in the cedar, the waxy bay laurel, find no feathered shape to match the voice, the morning is speaking and I can’t see how, only the blank faces of houses, blinds drawn across their eyes. [wanted to put in […]

The fog today so gray, so low to the ground, like smoke on a humid day, and from it emerged shapes of trees, prototypes, not yet beings– the sun on fogged glass was blinding bright, reflecting back instead of showing me outside as cars hurtled down the highway as if it were nothing, our only concession to think twice before changing lanes, too well aware that unseen does not equal unreal, we lose that luxury at 70 miles per hour.

[Hydrangea] Heartfelt, thankfulness, sorrow, frigidity– the meanings are mixed when it comes to these. A few blue remain but most petals are sea-green, burnished at the tips by a deep dusty pink. The rains have returned leeching acid from the soil, the plant conveying the state of its roots– in neutral soil it could say anything,  leaving one to infer. Most now are the consistency of brown crepe paper and fall with ease, melting into the dew-damp walk. Silence and space– the most […]

The clouds in White Center: Charbroilled smoke from Zippy’s Giant Burgers, altocumulus hued pink from the first real sunset. It seems flatter here. The mountain peak hogs the view down certain streets, and in the parking lot one over, an argument, a dog barks incessantly– no, they might have been agreeing, loudness skewing immediate perceptions, the air just after sunset tinted like a window, not quite night yet, but everything softening, and I know they call this place rat city, but tonight it’s almost pretty. No, it […]

A garden-variety massacre: Powdery blight, tomato stems felled, liquifying, putrid, thin and brown, fruits on the ground in varied states of decay, forests of mold hairs, copious and fine– Under gray skies in sodden soil collapsing husks returning to whence they came– There was a storm that shook fruits free, there was hard ground that split their skins, there was a rat that sunk in teeth and then there were seeds so many small promises that even neglected even laid to waste […]

In your absence the dog has elected to sit outside moping on the deck in the late morning cool. In the forest, a constant call and response, and she, though pampered, still animal, more attuned to the language of birds.  I read a book on it, am now trying to tell a cry from the canopy from a sigh from the floor. Or a whine from the door– she doesn’t want in, she wants me out– […]

A little drunk you stopped and stooped to see what LP was splintered on the walk as two men smoking outside the tattoo shop looked on, amused, Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life— we walked back past the taqueria and playground, the pot dispensary, its night -melded neon, a temple with rows of prayer wheels outside, you turned them one by one in front of me, but said you said a few prayers on my behalf, love still the end and all of […]

More rain, irregularly– halfway across the bridgespan but no further still, the return of clouds is a comfort, having complained about them all my life they’re still mysterious here sky-like, there, hurt pink, hematosed, light pollution probably– now it’s stopped raining and the silence is distressing erasure by halves worse than none at all

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.