Moody rain all along Lake Crescent, a fresh wreck the flares like embers– last night we kept the fire going until its bitter end coaxing and coaxing a few more flames until the night consumed the beach it is immense the lowest tide the endless starless sky no clear line of demarcation just soft gray nothingness and the faintest clouds of breath to prove our existence
it’s a bitter root that twists deep into the dirt the dark gestalt of things unspoken and so retained rehearsed in lonely moments
it’s still light out early to bed a headache all day dull creeping thing– absence too spatial, temporal the gingko trees or the sky in between I take it back though there is no void nothing is relentlessly a thing the streetlight comes on a breeze stirs the leaves thunderstorms tomorrow no reprieve
and then summer turned back into itself gray with cool rain and mist in the foothills violet arcs in the talus field foxgloves laden with water and the falls falling audibly again were it so simple fashioning a retreat unease even here nothing quite dampens it
Escape to the mountains to see what endures– the sun-baked alpine packed dirt and scree fiery wildflowers strange butterflies warming afternoons a rock comes loose– quiet more profound after its absence tread lightly almost as if trespassing on scalloped snowfields glaciers, blue-hued, nearly holy– if they won’t last what could?
How many words for snow what could be long-awaited or sudden sea change overnight the gulls are beside themselves the city roofs are white ice-plated pavement you are far and likely to stay that way for a while the sky is still flakes dislodge in the breeze whole trees dissolve into white pixels and then it all starts up again like an orchestral chorus overwrought and beautiful it makes its own time
Stilled, the chills sets in in fingers and toes and heels– still, it seems easier to stay in so many ways, yes, facile– but the sky is cloudy and the moon is half full, what blame is there really? No long shadows here, regret like one too many, only one, so easily walked back and the sun tomorrow outside this window is such a ridiculous shade of gold– generosity, magnimosity, can’t look right at it, […]
Crescent moon mostly a shadow mostly nothing absence of light each night listening for the voice hearing it wishing I hadn’t– the matte of lack having plenty but just not that– the rest is black but this silver sliver shiny as promise pulling like desire like a hook through the mouth
Even the question marks start to look like contour lines— how good are you with a compass and map? Just when can you call a place familiar? Does your stomach also drop when you step off the trail and make your own alone across faceless rocks? Not in fear per se more weightlessness in walking away from the final constraint and either way is that choice still immediate or is it blunted by practice? And […]
Clearer up North still these birch trees abandon symmetry to grasp at the sun water in the canyon quick with runoff winter’s remainder and that same low angle of sun that makes a forest live but later now these hours stretch open like a safety net
OPTIONAL POETRY 