we ran through a forest at night an unfamiliar road an unfamiliar night anything can be foreign depending on context . back-lit windows as heavy-lidded eyes monstrously large behind the trees . a car passing quickly a thought that won’t settle that’s not a bird it’s a bat
Sometimes forget and write September, or some long-past year, the moment’s default, multiverse– Somewhere it is September, somewhere it’s still summer, yesterday bluebird at the beach and honeysuckle– a wash of memory, clean sweep of tide, a commuting. The effect is gentle, soft as this breeze, yesterday’s breeze, still a breeze somewhere, or what will become another, conservation, so cleanly seen, forget and write conversation, again clarity in lapse of memory, saying what I didn’t […]
Frowned upon to write about dreams but I want to say how the wild things arrived, hares, wildcats, hawks– not dangerously– estatically. The subconcious colors the world, if neccessary, decadently– It was a tapestry how they came down from the trees, in medias res, the way dreams go, my childhood home, summertime with wolves, no fear, just floating from the same lack of gravity– not obeying logic, but following something, some unnatural orders, and happily
Too icy to leave, weekend in town, a radio on somewhere, drowsy, staticky, non-descript winter, truly in the thick of it. Each year it still comes as a surprise. Transitory states: is this wet snow, or cold rain? And why make distinctions? Strange dreams this morning, late to the Christmas party, searching for a seat. Today is the day they’ll take the tree, make a note of it, the birds in the hedge by the […]
Trying to use the produce before it spoils, the milk a lost cause, dust rueful on the mantle. So easy to think, if only– but each year knows better, better. How does the cilantro just liquify? It’s cool in the refrigerator. What lasts and what does not? Salt and biterness, but you can’t cure a life. Maybe preserve it, depriving it of air, and light, keeping it for the sake of possession, the fear of […]
Dog star, always there, in the dog days of summer, in these winter hours that pass like small lifetimes, secret, still, enclosed. I forget sometimes that being a tide involves wide margins, sea changes, rushing in and reticence in equal measure– never ever there but always moving towards it. Dog star, still there, waiting faithfully at the edge of the horizon. Not a portent. Not an omen, but maybe an answer to some unspoken longing.
Day and night, vise-like, bookends to whatever this is. A return? Or stalled momentum. Pieces of salt, like stars, stud the black ice. This year drawn out to its breaking point– a twist of the champagne cork– anticipation is such a terrible ache. And this cold cuts to the bone. Waiting for a word, a sign, breath suspended in the frigid air, and fingers gone numb, only hurting when they touch something warm– a loss […]
The high was still low. In the shade the cold was bitter, and when the wind picked up– Three arbors of grapes, overgrown, neglected, and some chipped clipping shears. What makes a return prodigal? A morass, deadwood, suckers, shoots the color of rust, dried blood, arteries, and the ashen ghosts of summer after summer. Excise, and find the form inherent. To finish a thing, just one thing, done in its proper season and sequence. A […]
The shortest day gives way to the longest night. Of course. The street, this building, quieter than usual, perhaps everyone gone, travelling home, or just asleep. The hour is late, maybe the emptiness woke me, that big, smooth zero, like a rock of ice. You know it would float. That doesn’t make sense, I know. Of course. But that doesn’t make it wrong, either. Harbingers, suddenly listening to Tom Waits, craving a racket. There are […]
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 […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 