Quick cold when the sun fell behind the butte, but this day was longer than the last, and so will tomorrow and the day after that. A pink-gold glow on distant snow– not many people came out this far this year, the road is quiet and distant lights reflect off the lake, so warmly, a small city, now, under a waxing crescent– still a coyote slinks down the street, hills and culverts enough of a […]
The unbelievable brightness of snow, coming from low gray the mountain pass was a different day set inside a bleaker one. Only thirty minutes to make it through the graphic reach of trees, the whole wide scene a black and white book for new born eyes, awe displacing fear entirely, for a moment the hard rime, the steep grade descent, forgotten, lost in the story that ends with: even in all this there’s a kernel […]
It’s harder to wrap up this year, odd angles, the paper sliding, the tape run out– In all seriousness, there’s less of a veneer this time, things are very much what they seem to be, not good. Of course, this may be because I didn’t decorate, about to leave, again, and need to pack and mail those bills already– I think instead I’ll go run through the forest and try to smell the evergreens, under […]
i. The longest night of the year was not so long when bridged by sleep, all kinds, dreams nested in dreams like Russian dolls, brightly-hued, drenched in lacquer, but nothing in the center– there are things the mind keeps from us. ii. Which isn’t to say I don’t still wake often– the newspaper delivered in its arc and impact, or no sound at all but with a different tenor of silence, or white noise, […]
i. We told Blondie we’d see her next time we came back, red rock dreaming before we even left, but maybe masked by rueing her cooking– lead-bellied all the way to Vegas. ii. Muted, it presented a different face, not dry, or running full and sudden, I didn’t know what to expect– one of the key precursors for loving. iii. Loss, too. Leaving gets under your skin more than anything– I picked red […]
What settles? You. A draft. The foundation of a house. This wind picks up but never gets alarming. And I can’t tell disappointment from lack of inertia, as they’re both so drab and gray and boring.
A strange pull, now, and emptier space– no, loftier, what the sunrise lacks in warmth it makes up for in expansiveness. All this time all at once, do I tread it, eat it, rest under it? This is undiscovered land and the things that I so feared are rendered differently now, in safety– with ample room for consideration, less careful now, less constrained. This landscape starts in red-barked saplings, lichen crusts, deep pastures out to […]
There was freedom in those hills– we carried out a bit with us with wind-burnt faces and slightly wild gazes, but it fades so fast– this the hard part of a return, a sense of loss that these piles of rancid laundry do nothing to assuage.
We slept in a graveyard of trees, a cradle of fire, formerly, and the outermost edge of the Southwest desert. The sun slipped away all afternoon as the wind picked up across the further steppes, traced mesas with their new dusting of snow– So we slept early and shallowly, as dreams of deer passed through camp towards the ice-clotted spring further on. Crystalline life, all that I could need, or want, breath or heart, here […]
Strange thing, an allergy. An act of protest— Even at the molecular level I am in revolt. Punky. Itchy. It smacks a bit of betrayal— Why rise up in welts without clarity of position, or at least a list of demands? I say the unexplainable should at least be placatable— each drag of the nail is relief and regret— to say, pick a side, is only reasonable. Here, I’ll even draw the line.
OPTIONAL POETRY 