Already summer lingers at the edges of night, staying light until late, the sun spills pink on the crown of mountain ranges that surround us. And how strange that until today I truly thought that restraint was the only way— it’s evenings like these that are designed to test it.
The sky too blue, it’s impossible to think. Along the fence the columbines bloom in neon hues, split into alien chambers, spurs. Along the road, banks of snow, no— cottonwood down, filling the air with fluff, an invitation to float, a call to subvert, a paean to the arbitrary– although they say that finding personal meaning in ordinary things is just one of many signs of delusion. Still, on the radio three different times, on […]
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 […]
Life-red, the stems of the maple sapling, the spinach that’s already bolted in the heat, unseasonable, unless we accept that a change has been made, summer starting earlier now, outdoors at least, where the green is frank, the crimson exposed, a leaf is a leaf, nothing less, nothing more.
Maybe it isn’t a need to leave or a need to stay, it’s a need for space– we’re going up that? was said, an ocean headland scramble, the trail a crease in the palm of upright sand, and the ocean, all and always, constant and eroding– which in itself implies time, these smooth flat stones a bit metaphysical, dark when drenched, laced white when dry, left by the tide amongst a thousand clacking barnacles, the comfort of […]
A reluctant return, a drag behind the motion, why? I still think of you now and again. A year, five, a loss of distinction, like water, difficult to define or bind. Is it because I’ve stopped trying, trusting blindly in gravity, sheer weight of will, pale and barren but exerting some pull? Another year condensed into a drop, the phase changes, properties too, but the laws are adhered to (but which? but whose?) If the night […]
Robber jay soft gray to belie an edge a storm of feathers around a head to take from a hand like that so flagrantly and to plan the thievery in pairs in silent skeletal trees rising below this scraggy summit against a bare sky no view no hint of the drop just mist bright like bleach and to live without fear is to be free yes unless you’re casting it off onto others
Thinking of a river, thinking of a lake, of water, cool and far from here, and of passage, if not arrival, of what comes after endings, and also beginnings, what’s beyond, what’s more– Thinking of the forest floor, gestalt of cast off needles and moss, how gracefully it accepts a weight, gives way but doesn’t break, and with each year how it grows– in place.
Sometimes like a cataract the artist’s eye trained to see negative space and so used to starting with a blank but what else works that way really just try to pay a bill with possibility hyperopia more a defect than a marketable skill
In the distance the sky a turgid pewter gray to a lowering blue but here it was just a bit of wind and waiting– . Catatonic in the elevator the woman said how is your day going my husband just fell twelve feet but he’s going to be ok I think he’s in surgery now and asked for positive vibes . It never did thunder so I did instead but a peal or an appeal […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 