OPTIONAL POETRY

There was an island. I’m not sure what all’s left after the hurricane, division the same as multiplying by fractions, loss masquerading as gain, but then again long before it hit we hiked over to the Chimney on the Bay side, a brick stack remained, the rest imagination— this wasn’t the first time, and won’t be the last. Things get displaced in a memory, I wonder if I could still trace a path from the […]

A large dark joy of evergreen forests, this stellar’s jay scrapes through the gutters, utters guttural croaks, tossing compacted bits of pine needles and moss to the deck boards below, ostensibly in search of food but I’ve always thought this bird is sort of a punk, with his shock black crest and hard-eyed stare he says he doesn’t give a damn, damn, damn, until I start to get close.

Disquieting returns; a freeze watch out East, new growth on your scans, a return to dormancy, more gravely, its loss– there are no more words but look how on the porch the shadows of some leaves pattern the rest, the intricate geometries of sun, the blood-red stems, seed pods growing dry and perilous

Usually not a big proponent of prompts or poetic forms, but figured eh, why not? Late again. Still not done. This morning was chilly but then the clouds burned off. Already these lines are not the right length, I contain multi -tudes too, but poorly. Too short. Too long. Is the point of school to deaden the soul prior to working? It was unclear, so I went back for more and still don’t know, anything, […]

Wide awake at four AM, a sore throat woke me, throat– a word so squat and toady no wonder things get stuck; unspoken words a likelycause of hoarseness, hoarse– derived from hoar and hearse, old and musty, hint of deadly, an all-but assumption of frost,forgotten all summer until  overnight the blades of grass merit the sobriquet– encased in ice they crack under their weight, cue frozen creek beds, driftsof snow, which sounds drowsy, but no– the heavinessof arrested motion  is too keenly feltin […]

All today the sky has been a softening gray, so passivethe sun in retrospect seemsharsh– by the evening commute the far bridge was lace against lush, lights ofdistant cities floatinglike everything, like a mirage hovers,but real, when nothing else was, or at least is as good as forgotten–  we all swim home, starting to think of goingto bed early, getting out from under this blanketof humidity, going from dream state to dream state, slippery places, hard to grasp but easy […]

Who could have known the turn of the night,as on the pier the Ferris wheel glowed, we watched from above, it spun though long closed for rides, you wanted to go,but were leaving at dawn,and I’d like to inquire  if these minutes will add upto anything at all, no—it’s enough, maybe, the way moonlight spills acrossthe bay, that within minutes of seeing a face one can still sense that there’s more to come, even if not the […]

An edge. Even today, kayaking, even on water, in wave-derived furrows, patches of wind, a division between like and not  like. No, not exactly that, not here and there, either. An edge contains; convex, concave, even drawn flat it makes two from one and holds each one fast. On the east side of the lake I paddled ahead beyond the reach of your voice, trying to beat a hefty wake. An edge contains, it could […]

Mountains in the sky—how many shades of blue can the human eye see?  How many can be felt?(By day? By night?) The problem iswithout light, (sun, moon,)there is no distance, all darkness is immediate and can containanything, (mountain, valley,) except the contrast necessary to focus clearly on any sort of definitive edge– so nothingever ends.