OPTIONAL POETRY

Rising before the dawn, again,how quickly the days fall off,and how quickly some things arrive like nothing, how others don’t, until almost forgotten,reduced to the smallest sortof longing, a little bruise you can’t remember how you got, but there it is.                                      Backlit the trees don’t look like trees, branches indiscernibly thick, it seems the sky is more dark than light, the sun coming through in little […]

The storm last night caught us all by surprise, a few strong gusts the only warning before a squall line rolled across the lake and in lashings of thumb-sized rain the sky turned green.  Anywhere else I’ve lived that would mean run. Get down. Get as low as you can.  Here, it was just the greenness of the trees washing into the liquid skywith its somewhere sun the cause of all the thunder, danger being highly contextual, and safetyhighly relative, personal even.  I […]

This here is fine, but a really interesting playwould be about the boaton the backdrop slowly coming to realizethat is not actually at sea,  is not an actor but only watching them play their parts on a stage that a backdrop borders but doesn’t engage, and how it still stays, knowing this, having no choice, not mobile or motile,not even with those fullpainted sails that it oncewas so proud of.    

Up with the sun but it isn’t upisn’t even blush or flush with the butte the light comes from lowbut still catches on the grapestheir matte purple tinged with dew and pulling on the vines we’ve changed our places over time and nowI’m setting as it rises.  

The mornings are cooler now,the coyote’s returned or probably a new one, it seemed a little smaller. And that wraps up summer–a boat has cut its engine and sits on the still lake.Knowing the ending,now we wait. The finches rehearse their southern migration, chatter excitedly about their upcoming trip. We who are staying start to grow a thicker coat, to keep us warm, hide our leanness in the coming gaunt months. The morning tries to burn off these sorts of thoughts,the boat moves […]

Last night the wind whippedflagwires in the valley against their poles, with closed eyesit could have been sailboats worried in their moorings at a freshening breeze. A goldfinch landed on the rail, electric against the lowering sky,then startled away, and allthis time I’ve thought harbingers were meant to be frightening, not frightened.

Sky, hill, pewter, rustbrighter this side of the mountains but still subdued, the radio finally finds and settles on a station, I try to pick out words, catch glimpses of mylar ribbon strewn  through trees like tinsel froma cherry harvest long over a song comes on slow so I understand it tú estás siempre en mi mente,a nostalgic proclamation   of horns and strings and chimes–the credits should roll now as I shoot down this road splitting foothills washed  in dust haze and gold– […]

It is almost the end of summer’s high cathedral days this ground is airystoring yearsin its loam a downed branch genuflectsas I step on its edge robed in velvety moss that dampensthe sound, still small birds dartseeking safetyin the open, shelter without closing, a very present refuge—oh how these words have stuck,and no bird singsits songs by rote but no song is eitherentirely our ownand there’s still a comfort hidden somewherein these sounds among the […]

The first rays of sun are honey on the leavesthe back-lit maples a singing sort of green but already slipping into something more sensible the beginning’s ending the first of many In envy I watch thempalm the breeze not obliged to leavenot turning away from the morning’s kindness distilling this suffusion into sweetsweet sap but I have no alembic of trunk and leafjust a few harried wordsand somewhere to be.