Winter is here now armoring the trees with small blades of frost the silence absolute the fog emphatic the Douglas squirrel traversing the birch branch seems unnatural the hours pass dreamlike with an elasticity of time there is hardly any snow no horizon at all the sky low and matte the inside of an eggshell and here we wait
The bobcats came in close at dusk as the rain ebbed three, one following one after the other like easy conversation wild around the eyes unhurried, unworldly and for one single moment joy
the street ended in a cloud as did the day a damp forest lot made softer by mist some of it rain and some of it a gift a slip of the ephemeral given up by the earth
rabbit at the yard edge still as stone fading into dusk awaiting something or outwaiting it— I wasn’t prepared for the silence here awaking suddenly to the crack of wood under duress holding my breath listening as the whole forest surged around me— there is no such thing as empty space I know this by how night swallows this house the knock-kneed pines and the flooded fields beyond them the very earth falling away the […]
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini accompanied by the roar of two plastic dinosaurs from the back seat of the car the rain compounds the dark and traffic inches along I sent the package to the wrong house, the old house this is an uncertain endeavor what is mine, what was mine you are unaware in your carseat watching the world melt into discrete globes of red and white and green clinging to the windows […]
these days are mostly dark a trick of latitude headlights, brakelights strung like beads throughout the hills— everything beyond them the arras of night even knowing well the trees, the park even seeing them aglow in the low strange sunset not one hour ago I am now uncertain the cars pass and pass by like electrons in their tracks there are no stars there is no sky just an aperture thrown open an expectant thing […]
Slow dawn over the bridge a dark gray sky that dreams of other colors, softly, dully, mirrored in the window panes of flat-faced houses perched on hills that descend precipitously into the lake, so still this morning, no trace of movement, no speedboat wake, no curl of smoke, nothing to indicate life save the houselights, so warm and abstract at this distance— the bridge span then extends into a tunnel clear passage that obscures the […]
little bird waiting for the others ready for a fight against frozen nights the frost-laden dawns heavy mornings where the sun is loathe to rise I’m a little late to replace the feeder you wait on a bare branch still and small as a leaf for the pink glass globe of nectar of life itself snow begins to fall is it right to intervene or like all else is this kindness guilelessly but still something […]
Today a hummingbird hemming the courtyard corners, hail from slate skies, sun falling in heavy bars, the crack shot drop of a dead branch in the distance, all this wind, if not harbingers, still precisely sounded tones, probably worth noting
I can drive back now without google mapsback home? one struggles with the definition Snow in the forecastI can’t find my gloves somewhere still unpackedthe endless boxes stacked haphazardlyin the stale spare room like the thoughtsof an insufficiently occupied mindhalf-open and malevolently unfinished winter solsticethe temperature dropping
OPTIONAL POETRY 