that inexorable pull the waterfall splitting into a hundred separate streams rivers in the air full coursing but bankless even in fear there is boundlessness here mist and rain caught in indeterminate webs and spiders dead center if there is mystery we carried it in water runs to the lowest point
More North than home, this morning-still forest– dull today, awaiting more snow, more sky, more anything– a drowsy forest, half-sleeping under packed-down ice, still dirt where the sun breaks through, on some days, but not this one, no more day now than hours ago, barely more than night, the sun somewhere in its low arc, somewhere under these insulating clouds, very little moves, the lake comes as a surprise, so silent at its banks, even […]
How the intolerable becomes tolerable, against all attestations otherwise the bite, forgotten that old dispensation what a strange capacity a heart deadens itself, dryly, inexorable as a nature show prey, predator, or merely winter coming on, nothing is surprising now, not even this
The late-July breeze, distinctive in ease, a quiet morning slipping by, I wake and say I’m here! I’m here! somehow still a fear of loss, despite the day unfolding like a lawn chair, predictable, light-weight . To have, to hold– a leaf-dappled scene a girder on the building, perforated at regular intervals and the word EMPTY over and over, is it a warning? or a confirmation . There is so much space inside these days, so little tethering […]
another day box-like in progression, predictability, oh inflexibility of time– I’d rather an ocean I’d rather that ocean sound that imperfect rhythm constant yet somehow revelatory I know the pilgrim changes it’s not the pilgrimage per se but things are always more tolerable somewhere else
Everything defined by space, in gestalt, they say figure -ground reversal, emphasizing that negative space, sometimes a new image pops out, at the loss of the original– seeing it another way it cannot be re-seen . here the gingko indifferent sky glimpsed through scaffolding at angles, is it contained, constrained? somehow the mind says no . but what does the mind know? a morning breeze tinged with the sea lifts all hopes but sometimes morning […]
Rain starting to come in the open window the day says get to the point and July as a whole– I don’t know, it is somehow insubmersible . a stream of ragged people go by with unclear words but that tone is unmistakable . water beads up on the glass, imperfect, but linear– . and so, this month goes on
A cool cloudy morning, leniency after the weekend’s heat. A dog throws itself down the ravine in pursuit of a ball, the neighbor unleashes a cascade of glass bottles getting ready to pack up the house. All day in the mountains yesterday, sweat, scree, snow. Aching today, a reminder, the summit hard-earned, but elation tempering the bite of elevation, and descent always less benign than we thought.
A bowl of limes in Mexican pewter its lines drew me at the thrift store coarse engravings a primordial river and lighter than it looks . A lime tree does better in drought than in abundance deprivation at its sour heart although with so much juice it’s tempting to say sweetness of course it isn’t but is also not bitter the childlike green belies the nuance . It is a promise in a way to […]
Woke late to frank sun dry hills teeming with passerines and one hoarse quail panting out its love. How foreign, to let it go unspoken, not to sing out from break of dawn as if your very heart were bursting— In the shade a dove’s cool notes, cicadas starting up, even the breeze in the sagebrush discontented until it too is heard
OPTIONAL POETRY 