what is dormant and what is dead and how to know it dawn is a cloud a streetlight through cedar in lieu of a sun there is something heavy about this stretch of winter a landing in a way a water-logged nadir it rains every day distance feels distant
A quiet morning, with bird, and the slow exhale of the furnace. The fire stutter starts, we all come to life. Maybe today they will find the new feeder, or the popcorn we scattered, grown soft in the rain. The wild here is more wild than before, not easily enticed. Maybe we will find what the coyotes caught last night, unholy screams, then, unnerving silence. Milk clouds this tea, a leaf sinks, then rises, like […]
a short sunbreak barely an hour otherwise it is still save for water falling from branch to boulder say an echo of the prior rain the stone worn smooth from years of the same year’s end time is somehow more perceptible say the way a sunbeam is caught in low-lying mist the way memories return to fill empty space the garlic has sent up new green shoots like swords, or say tongues–
Nearing year’s end the upstairs window frames the endless forest firs and cedars oscillating in the wind small storm, but the paper says get ready, something big is rolling in from the coast or maybe we are hurtling towards it this planet spins after all
Given the rarity of sun we can forgive its low insistent exuberance flooding our eyes from all directions the woodpeckers chatter each call a rapid succession of questions and answers at the edge of this forest almost everything is soft a maze of damp boughs and spongey loam sunbeams that pool honey on the moss the fur of the coyote laid out by the ditch its legs outreached and stiff as branches
the night cracks open at four in the morning a tree fell out back gusts push and press against the house the windows protest a tree is still falling, or maybe just a large branch the absolute black distorts perception— a shot and its retort as the thing comes down sharp, profane, maybe more than one thing maybe the night itself scaffolding collapsing the rush of wind obscures any easy answer
the horses abandon their paddock for higher ground it’s really coming down now constant drubbing insistent as a heartbeat the ground is at its limit it might be fatalism to say if it does, it does if it will, it will, but each raindrop hammers home its point with relative accuracy the valley road will flood soon the sky reflected back in pools of muddy glass
at dawn, pearls of rain strung through the bare maple barely a dawn the sky going from wet slate to something slightly lighter a storm today the trees grow discrete but otherwise it passes intangibly a promising new acquaintance I will never see again
a long drive on a short winter day land masses stayed by bridge after bridge the on ramps airy and undulatory and backlit by a low blinding sun the waterways also meandering but with less precision a few straggling salmon follow gradients from the bay up into creeks still swollen from rain and redefining their banks an eagle roosts by the end of the freeway in flight all these bisecting paths are rendered flat as […]
this house sleeps, dreams in the wild night alchemy the tree tops dissolve the sky a soft black no stars, the moon frost on bone, these windows become mirrors, impressions, blurry domesticity, low incandescence, what passes outside passes unknown— until a coyote trips the floodlight ambling an arm’s reach from the house betrayed by motion he continues in motion brindled black, dog sure— by day the hares and towhees freeze when they sense eyes upon […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 