OPTIONAL POETRY

Adrift, adrift.  The lake full of algae, it clung to us as we walked out of the water, turned our towels green.  Now a headache from too much sun.  Always a remainder, these days.  No even division, always something to carry on.  

The heat keeps rising. Every mile here is named for a creek or a canyon. Looking for news on the fire, now there’s two. It’s happened before,  homes becoming structures, evacuation orders, an influx of hotshots to hold the line. By day, the smoke and the sun make it hard to see the flames. An acrid haze falls across the lake, the helitack teams scoop up buckets of water to dump on the perimeter. Closer though, the sky goes orange, the hills […]

All at sea. Then the doldrums: little wind and the heat startsto cling.  Sleep begets sleep,  the sprinkler exhausts itselfout beyond closed blinds, the fan tries to coax a draftacross the room, window  to window, it clicks and turnsand clicks and turns back. The sprinkler casts a sine wave across the grass which soaks  it up like a dry-bristled brush,but the sky stays blank.       

Are these the only choices? A list of footnotes, an orderly room, or the three AM bird and a glut of words, a feeling that something is due, something needs doing, a stomach ache, a hunger. Guilt. And which do I prefer? Strange, to miss missing. What good does it do to say: Death is a ebb tide, grief is a flow, neither has a clear beginning, or end. Everyone knows it. I could write […]

It’s muggy here, inviting sluggishness, there’s not enough boxes to pack anyway, decisions can be made in a week, a few days, there’s no need for reaching, grasping, the breeze moves me, that’s all. Outside the kid from upstairs is doing soccer drills, first touch and quibbling about fairness. Even here the grass is starting to yellow. His feet beat the ball like a drum, ready to put it in the net, the goal of […]

Last night brought the hills in close, late afternoon and they’re back in place. The lake looks deep, scored by whitecaps and racing boats. Finally the deck is in the shade, and it’s almost time to leave. Would that I could bottle a place, could stay to watch the bats drop out of a nearly empty sky just one more time, to stay up late and sit outside as the landscape gives off radiant heat […]

Mostly overcast, and how. Where have the colors gone, the spark of early summer giving way to heat-bleached tones. Or maybe it’s me, lost in dreams as deadlines approach, lured by drama on the pitch and grand scale emotions, like the moths to the lamp outside the garage door, to  bright lights, to easy escape, a vida em outras línguas, the eternal promise of somewhere else.

A Western skink, slunk along a rock with its tail like ink. I have never instinctively liked a reptile so much. Surreally blue its tail can be dropped for a neat escape. Of course, it fades with age into little more than a snake with tiny legs, but right now it is at odds with a drab landscape,a perfect work of art darting under the crawl space, a sensory affront yet altogether logical. 

Some broad-leafed bush interruptsthe path, uncut grass grown high  and gone to seed. Bindweed and briars– everything is reaching. The bridge up again, we wait. Half-packed, this apartment  begins to resemble howit looked when we moved in.   They dug a channel to connect the two lakes, but is there any markthat cannot be erased? Which reminds me thatI’ll have to patch and paint.