OPTIONAL POETRY

I was just calling to say that I am on fire. You told me to rain more. Or was it, try not to mind? Either way the lines got crossed, distance no comfort, I’ll have to resort to homing pigeons. Or smoke signals, more like.  

To leave the window open, to wake to the sound of the ocean, here, there is peace. Even if I still wake too early, still can’t get back to sleep, I can watch the sun rise, sunrise a misnomer, really, here the clouds just get brighter, shades of gray between night and day, and even before dawn the spotlight on the neighbor’s garage kept flashing on, motion -sensored. Just after five I walked down to the beach, discovered […]

I try to exist in two phases: the barrier is constancy of motion. It is not for action I cut the plane with a fiberglass blade, not for momentum, a current pulls along in any state, even without me, the boat will float even in pieces, even beyond. The first barrier is waiting. Or is it wanting? Every night is a river running and I am a shadow, a dry-sider, trapped on the surface of […]

Kept hitting snooze till a character in my dream said it was time to go. I don’t even know, hustling down the hill, face full of sun.  The sticker bushes outside unkempt houses lash out, try to draw blood. Heat spurring growth and anger, bikers constantly squeezing by on the sidewalk. On your left, on your left. Your right to pass ends where my thorns begin (says the bramble. Not me.)

I try to clean.  They’re showing the space. I’m strangely keen to impress those who will take my place. Let it be said, her mirrors shone. It won’t be noticed. I think of my mother, lift the stain from the kitchen floor. A fleck of toothpaste from the sink. An errant leaf. Erasing the history of the past few weeks.Were that there were a sponge that could do more.              

Is it a dog? A box? An aftershock? Two things that follow. One  that contains.  Or, constrains.We’re out of packing tape again. And dish soap. And everything.I could draw a line through  the days on the calendar but that might be too decisive  an action. They spill away,next week the ocean, the week after, fires. And every night it’s too hot to sleep.   

Adrift, adrift.  The lake full of algae, it clung to us as we walked out of the water, turned our towels green.  Now a headache from too much sun.  Always a remainder, these days.  No even division, always something to carry on.  

The heat keeps rising. Every mile here is named for a creek or a canyon. Looking for news on the fire, now there’s two. It’s happened before,  homes becoming structures, evacuation orders, an influx of hotshots to hold the line. By day, the smoke and the sun make it hard to see the flames. An acrid haze falls across the lake, the helitack teams scoop up buckets of water to dump on the perimeter. Closer though, the sky goes orange, the hills […]

All at sea. Then the doldrums: little wind and the heat startsto cling.  Sleep begets sleep,  the sprinkler exhausts itselfout beyond closed blinds, the fan tries to coax a draftacross the room, window  to window, it clicks and turnsand clicks and turns back. The sprinkler casts a sine wave across the grass which soaks  it up like a dry-bristled brush,but the sky stays blank.       

Are these the only choices? A list of footnotes, an orderly room, or the three AM bird and a glut of words, a feeling that something is due, something needs doing, a stomach ache, a hunger. Guilt. And which do I prefer? Strange, to miss missing. What good does it do to say: Death is a ebb tide, grief is a flow, neither has a clear beginning, or end. Everyone knows it. I could write […]