more wilderness here in a square foot than home already hotter than predicted these clouds look like a child drew them and incessant songbirds insisting it’s not summer yet that we are still arriving such a strange place this year is given in to longing at every margin still snow in the passes and this baslamroot spent
Mornings up North the roar of central heat drowning out the creek a sign of life in a sleeping house. Light rain, the snow all melted three days ago, it had lingered a while. A drab bird turns and turns in the holly, but nothing else stirs. Read the news but then thought better of it. The same evergreens here as home. Sometimes a small distance is sufficient, and preferable. Sometimes rueful, cold, intractable. Some […]
Lost in some forest north of the city, the driver returns the wedding guests home, some somewhat drunk, a song rises up, hoarse, flamenco– staccato clapping, the rutted road, headlights bathing the night fog in gold. There is no place to be now, the wedding guests are returning home, with newly-softened gazes, reminded again of love, the road turning in on itself, laughter, fake despair. The wedding over, the driver drives the wedding guests somewhere, […]
Querétaro state by bus, a ripe sunset, pastel trucks, corn fields and sun-bleached rocks. No country has the exact same color of dust. This is already a new life, new eyes. The old highway winds through high desert, fat-paddled cacti, unknown birds, a dark cloud to the North feathering out, the night, halcón, the wistful sky, lindo, listo, ready to take flight
torrents of rain the hour before departure jewel-tone leaves against a wash of gray the sky gives no hint of time or day leaving I am already a little gone already the cobalt jay catches my eye a promise of color color y calor
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling, the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, slime-hung and barnacled. Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theaters?
Tableau: fake flowers in an enameled clay vase, the kind with birds and bird-like lines– yesterday’s coffee rewarmed, the bitterness doused in lait partiellement écrémé– bright horns gild the otherwise silence, some neighbor listening softly to Ring of Fire– beyond, the water. Yesterday we watched the tide sweep out, skookumchuch slipping through fingers of land, with vortexes and contrary eddies, spoken, taken aback, deadly– orange urchins, broken like eggshells, littered the rocks, exposed and lit […]
Half-asleep at the border crossing, behind some Iranian family at the duty-free, the mountains behind the distant city with still -illuminated ski areas, like shocking clouds, the highway a slick of electricity– aren’t we both always chasing arrival? . Here by morning the harbour is the same dirty emerald as the night before, raindrops cling to nascent buds with no wind to shake them free or shift the fog. A sailor rigs his boat. The […]
An ending is forcibly also a beginning– On the train from the airport, distant mountains under alpenglow, the air cold and friable, and all these memories like shards, catching the light and so irreparable– a minute passed is gone. [Thank you for all your kind comments while I was away– looking forward to catching up on everyone’s posts]
This morning seagulls called out whistle-bright above the frozen world, camellias under ice, clear dawning. Now it’s night, my bags are ready, nothing is left but to savor life, packed down nicely, finally, and this dry cava, cold as a cave, clinquant on the tongue, like the ocean arriving, a secret revelation, so transient and divine [HAPPY NEW YEAR! Optional Poetry is going on vacation, for the next week or so will be posting poems from the […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 