rabbit at the yard edge still as stone fading into dusk awaiting something or outwaiting it— I wasn’t prepared for the silence here awaking suddenly to the crack of wood under duress holding my breath listening as the whole forest surged around me— there is no such thing as empty space I know this by how night swallows this house the knock-kneed pines and the flooded fields beyond them the very earth falling away the […]
a day under glass how to explain the air was thick but nothing happened the sun never even rose late geese flew low in an avian shorthand in a lusterless sky
little bird waiting for the others ready for a fight against frozen nights the frost-laden dawns heavy mornings where the sun is loathe to rise I’m a little late to replace the feeder you wait on a bare branch still and small as a leaf for the pink glass globe of nectar of life itself snow begins to fall is it right to intervene or like all else is this kindness guilelessly but still something […]
it’s those in between days now the shock of cold at dawn but then the old familiar heat red flag watch east of the Cascades the fires taking off late the spiders out early even instinct stupefied it’s time to accept the tomatoes on the vine have gone mealy and sour there is a cost to holding out too long a loss in holding on I take the chicken wire off the garden beds and […]
I watched the bear in the meadow and felt no fear a vignette at sunset not really a trait a descent tomorrow and already the night is rough against my skin animal misgivings lumbering in the tall grass the wretched unease of an eve
we took a vow of silence but it was anything but silent rivulets of water and thunder at the base of the falls— we tried to find stillness but it was anything but still filigree alder leaves flashing in the breeze the slow sway of pines and so we abandoned absolutes in lieu of ablution the staggering coldness of the river glacier-fed my heart beating again
I take us out to walk in the rain I suppose to shape your character but two is autarchic— a litany of tribulation as we walk along runoff courses in the gutter and pools on the sewer plate so we fill it with buttercups then run away
When does desire turn into greed what is an appropriate allotment of want unseasonably muggy in this forest water has cut a deep ravine beneath cedar boughs through carpets of moss it funnels and pools below perfunctory logs and drops again resisting direction this is the work it cannot be worked at I know this well and yet
a great displacement by such a small bird mostly beak and jewel-hued neck— all other motion stagnant below his arcs craning to look we are too late he rifles each page of the evening sky etches out some new invisible rune cleaves air from air we duck again as chunks of it come crashing down
The heart is not here, it can not, will not, be here— in all this rain, more than we’ve seen in several years. A rabbit darts through the overgrown lawn, now gone to seed, each blade a reproach. What hasn’t been done, what can not, will not. A sparrow ascends, becomes untethered. Motion is sometimes but not always distraction. The clouds oppress but containing is what breaks you. In their garden beds the radishes crack.
OPTIONAL POETRY 