Nearing year’s end the upstairs window frames the endless forest firs and cedars oscillating in the wind small storm, but the paper says get ready, something big is rolling in from the coast or maybe we are hurtling towards it this planet spins after all
Given the rarity of sun we can forgive its low insistent exuberance flooding our eyes from all directions the woodpeckers chatter each call a rapid succession of questions and answers at the edge of this forest almost everything is soft a maze of damp boughs and spongey loam sunbeams that pool honey on the moss the fur of the coyote laid out by the ditch its legs outreached and stiff as branches
the night cracks open at four in the morning a tree fell out back gusts push and press against the house the windows protest a tree is still falling, or maybe just a large branch the absolute black distorts perception— a shot and its retort as the thing comes down sharp, profane, maybe more than one thing maybe the night itself scaffolding collapsing the rush of wind obscures any easy answer
the horses abandon their paddock for higher ground it’s really coming down now constant drubbing insistent as a heartbeat the ground is at its limit it might be fatalism to say if it does, it does if it will, it will, but each raindrop hammers home its point with relative accuracy the valley road will flood soon the sky reflected back in pools of muddy glass
at dawn, pearls of rain strung through the bare maple barely a dawn the sky going from wet slate to something slightly lighter a storm today the trees grow discrete but otherwise it passes intangibly a promising new acquaintance I will never see again
a long drive on a short winter day land masses stayed by bridge after bridge the on ramps airy and undulatory and backlit by a low blinding sun the waterways also meandering but with less precision a few straggling salmon follow gradients from the bay up into creeks still swollen from rain and redefining their banks an eagle roosts by the end of the freeway in flight all these bisecting paths are rendered flat as […]
High summer the currents long romances etching the bay a breeze from an open window the mosquito netting sways how tangible, how solid a day can be anchored in memory slipping into archetype a seagull descends from the tallest pine a long long descent crisp and white as the ferry’s wake across deep water the bay stretching on as far as the horizon blue soporific the day expands demands expansion the tide goes on and […]
This weird spring light that fills the house with green bright through the curtains the lashings of rain the day surges then cedes a thrush sings its cool low call the mist comes down into the pines behind the woodshed the forest behind us growing shadowed and deep somewhere out there the newly woken bear is making its way along the edge of a dream
The bobcats came in close at dusk as the rain ebbed three, one following one after the other like easy conversation wild around the eyes unhurried, unworldly and for one single moment joy
Cuetlaxochitl when not blighted or root-bound you are a lanky thing almost unrecognizable when green we know you only seasonally by your fiery bracts as a crimson attendant to the shortest days of winter which is another way to say the longest nights— here as always words are problematic we hear what is said but not what is omitted and accept cheery propagation without a second thought
OPTIONAL POETRY 