The night before a departure, waiting for that balm of Not Here. It’s supposed to come in threes, but between worse, and worst– I mean, I can’t even tell if this food has gone bad– implications are tiring. I’m going to the ocean, to take in the water’s endless rehearsal and the steady, steady shore, to live in the littoral– there’s not one thing that isn’t somehow in motion, just I wish they sometimes weren’t
And like that, overnight, the end of full summer— a tainted glass, rain, that striking first chill. Oh there is something so sad and lovely about these first days of autumn: A distance carries more, an absence weighs, a heart grows blonder, gold as desire, as early larches turning to fire, as bold gestures dreamed of in quiet hours, the night gone still. The night that follows the day, the beauty and terror of the […]
Still here, still, here. How many times did she say it? The practice is yoking together. Sprawled along the floor like I know what I’m doing, Ujjayi, ocean breath, now come and meet this foreign body, a little space, a little more, a common interest we seem to share, now tell me more–
The body fails in predictable ways but sometimes I am still surprised when someone is and then is not
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 […]
Where does it come from? The sky, like rain, or from the far corner at night, when the world is rendered in ground glass, from outside, a front, low pressure or high– I’ve never believed in inexorable, but these days do give me pause . As Simon said to Garfunkle, I get the news I need on the weather report and as God said to Noah, hey, you better build a boat, although charitably, a flood could be billed as […]
The gingko, green fractal reaching in the breeze– there is geometry in a quiet evening, seen and unseen structures– the sky dimming like a screen, still blue, still blue, and the arc of a jetliner, the beams and girders of the closest build site, its lightbulbs, tungsten, in metal cages, old and comforting, just that one room lit, not even a room yet, a prototype, the lack that comes before, that emptiness that is at […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 