They cancelled the fireworks but no one knew the countdown proceeded and we arrived at a precipice with misplaced anticipation– a bewildered pause the cork stuck the breath retained who knew time could slip away unnoticed even as we marked it a profound underestimation our breath dissipating into the newly christened night
Oh how I love the city at night– the lights, the lights the quietest signs of life sharp against the cold air from a distance the interstate mistranslated, say a river, or a winter wind or one unending exhalation
Just past the pier a sea lion, briefly and two dorsal fins like piqued interest very present and transient only a few kids saw them and exited the water but at a certain point there’s no longer a point to reticence– consider the odds or don’t it still goes out like a sigh, the tide the pier stretching out into the open Pacific like the longest exclamation
worse than a promise unkept is one not made only implied no lie technically it rained the evening hours slumped into night the difference between dusk and dark said and meant is gray and quiet
Moody rain all along Lake Crescent, a fresh wreck the flares like embers– last night we kept the fire going until its bitter end coaxing and coaxing a few more flames until the night consumed the beach it is immense the lowest tide the endless starless sky no clear line of demarcation just soft gray nothingness and the faintest clouds of breath to prove our existence
a blue stroke across beige paper a river cleaves two banks look at this place the contorted topographies red dirt roads like open veins and muddied waters the stars at night are big and bright where does it come from this possessiveness? to take establishes the precedent of loss so choose your hypotheticals carefully– why don’t they, if only then the golden door would open simple, easy another girl got swept away in the Rio […]
it’s a bitter root that twists deep into the dirt the dark gestalt of things unspoken and so retained rehearsed in lonely moments
was it the sparseness offset by silence or the roundness of the number eclipsing the rest days, days, the lack of antacedence how do I begin to formulate a response it’s unsettled here dry when it should be raining charged with anticipation a bee came in the open window and then left nothing happens of course I doubt your fortuity
it’s still light out early to bed a headache all day dull creeping thing– absence too spatial, temporal the gingko trees or the sky in between I take it back though there is no void nothing is relentlessly a thing the streetlight comes on a breeze stirs the leaves thunderstorms tomorrow no reprieve
and then summer turned back into itself gray with cool rain and mist in the foothills violet arcs in the talus field foxgloves laden with water and the falls falling audibly again were it so simple fashioning a retreat unease even here nothing quite dampens it
OPTIONAL POETRY 