Entre chien et loup, now, when you visited it was summer, but you’d recognize this grimy rain from living up au Nord– ça fait un bail, I know, a voice from years ago sending thin words out over the Atlantic into a late night but putain, mec, reply
Tonight, a half-assed storm. The drunk man in the lobby slurs I don’t need this. Enough, rain, enough— my glass is turned over. I’ve run out of words to describe the night.
The top of the gingko has lost its leaves, with a windstorm in the forecast. In a sunbreak today I walked around the lake seeking solace in the dockyards, but found only cruel sleek boats, so capable of leaving that they were no comfort. These nights are gluttons, and there’s little left to take— I could count each yellow leaf, fine as a petal, yet strong enough to have held the sun, once. Anything could tame it, now, […]
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush because its weight is tangible— as far as omens go an albatross is worse when it is metaphorical . Sometimes words are as good for thirst as bucket of saltwater— give me something small to hold on to, some sea -smoothed stone, a startling barnacle
Rain like lace. I hate this weather for its consistency. My heart is temperamental as a leaf, it turns and turns and drops at anything. Scientists think that red pigments lower the freezing point of leaves, keep them viable for longer with the heat of anger. Or, having fallen, that anthocyanins leach out to poison the roots of any competition— such ugliness begat by beauty. And at the base of every leaf, an abscission layer, for […]
I’m more inured to the risks of flight than the perils of digging in, Exhibit A: the construction pit being filled with light rain, they’ll have to pump it clear again. I dreamed we were buying tickets to anywhere, found this great place on the coast– It’s really winter here, now, the sky the color of pavement, even the birds are bailing out– What a gift, what a gift to have wings, but also to lack the capacity for digging holes
The standoffish cat is asleep now, doubly distant. Behind the hanging blinds is an unlit lot. The only things that move are branches, and the second hand of the wall clock that isn’t turned back yet. No balmy night, no quiet stars, just the hum of the refrigerator and a glass of water— the wind isn’t enough to stir me, no, so here I am still, alone and in love
Standing still and green, the grass is more water than land. The sky is gray, dawn long past, but again, it’s hard to quantify. I think I may have a stone at my core, just one of those that studs the lawn, that fallen leaves adhere to, dense and cool, and hence the sense of weight, and how I wake on these days, Oregon mornings, to wistful rain, and a sense of longing–
That blank sky. Day, but not an inch more. A strata of birds wind through the building cranes’ poles, seagulls high, crows, lower. Now coffee and packing. The highway is a cure in that it demands forward movement– bird or car, a stall is failed flight. Such guilty solace, to take to the Interstate, alone, to burn miles like effigies, dividing a landscape into present, and past–
Funny how an absence can feel so weighty. Of course I still breathe, but the air is rarer, and I turn a little blue from time to time. Is there a word for the echo of an embrace? I swear, I can still feel it in my arms on nights like these, starless and wakeful, resting like a chill for as long as I can keep it.
OPTIONAL POETRY 