I woke with a want for the ocean gray and desolate, with winter surf veiled under soft, steady rain. A desert won’t be the same, too still and open– the ocean closes in, relentlessly. But the stars, you say, they’ll be amazing– Yes, if only I wanted clarity, but the act of waking was enough. Now I want to be muffled, I want to be hidden, to watch the squall lines build and then swallow up the […]
You said sips of breath but I remembered gulps of air– I’m American, Rumi, a Texan to boot, but still I can do nuance, and know too how the throat tightens from peril, at giving all or giving up— I’m leaving soon for the desert, winter-stark and emptied, with nothing to find, or so I hope, so tired now of looking, but God help me, I can’t stop.
After all this talk of phases and phase changes, of dawns where the fog plays at being water, the air grown palpable, the most regular of things seeming reachy, not quite as we thought, as if caught in the moment when a dream is revealed as such– Yes, that plane will leave no matter what, this modern migration not accommodating of stragglers who stayed up North too long, outlasting the cold, floating past all sense of time and urgency, […]
The wind spent itself last night– it’s now so still, the noise from the far road drifts up from the valley like some distant ocean roar. The morning hesitates– the sun didn’t show, so must it go on? Nothing moves, not a single thing, no bird, no branch, not even the wind -slackened maples down the bank– the air is thick with deliberation.
This maple’s a mess but might have been worse there must have been some arborist come to cut back limbs to stumps, I don’t recall it but then the evidence was mostly hidden by leaves; it took a lot of wind to get to this point. I also had to ask if this gate has always been here? Walking through a door being a cue to forget, but still I wonder about how hard it is […]
i. Again with these nights like oceans they come in fast and strong— it’s easy to forget just how much of this earth is coastline— roughly the same distance as from here to the moon. ii. Distance first is cruel, and then kind, and then necessary— our closest star is alpha Centauri, and it isn’t even a star, but two, a visual binary, close, at 23 AUs, or 3,440,751,030 km, so take that as […]
In the weeds and getting pretty damn salty– this week descends into the colloquial– no well-heeled words could ever do it justice, too upscale, they don’t get tired out, stretched to cover multitudes, they miss nuance, don’t say just how weary it gets– preservation, versus hanging on the line– only one hints at the prospect of falling, but knows that you won’t, as you can swing it, babe, you’re golden– is hope in the fucking rough
Late at night it gets so hollow– the stars precise, nearly clinical, the silence of it all silencing all. So now we’ve learned it’s possible to choke on open air this cold– it leaves a bitter taste, and once again open space is not the end all be all that I always expect, having failed to differentiate the land from the promise we’ve attached.
This day won’t budge it’s thick as ice caked on a west- facing windshield at once dense and brittle with its inherent duality of fragility and danger we only expect one at once at least I am surprised when a weakness has a weakness surprised to find the crack in the monotonous heaviness that cannot last it always does itself in in the end there’s an end there always is.
A flat five, the coldest night and in the black beyond the house, three owls. Is there a reward for hope? Or is necessity a mother? I do like the answer, here, have an owl, have owls, have stars, have cold air to see your breath, it’s not much but it is everything.
OPTIONAL POETRY 