First the sow and then the cub flat-faced, gouache-furred up above the service road climbing the bike trail through thick black alder— then the cub but not the sow, still not the sow, just wind in the tall grass, presentiments and doubts . A day later, at the border, waiting in line, looking at photos, car after car, lurching forward, again the menace of the unseen, an arbitrary line, truck routes, corn fields drawn at […]
the age of this place! and still it said the basalt flows of the Garibaldi range are relatively young— one could say something, then, maybe, about lenses, about powers of scale, how a thing comes into focus, so another falls away, something about the buoyancy of names, floating above a place, vagaries of translation, of words soft as wet ash, how this alphabet cannot spell them, how silt turns this lake otherworldly and opaque, how […]
arboreal sigh the wind lifts the boughsand lets them fallpresaging rainthese little tells—the terse alarm callsof the nuthatchessaying maybe, maybe the cougars have comedown low after stalkingin pairs two mountain ranges overso unusually bold—perhaps a harbingerthe canopy dense the understory opening up like a secretno berries are ripe yetbut among the stands of mountain ash like clarion bellsa slew of tiger lilies
We followed the creeka river, reallyloud in its bankslouder still underthe amphitheaterof a bridge—a striking huesomething primordialless green than bluebut not fully eitherrunoff from a glaciermelting unseenhigh in the mountainabove usa supposition—most of the foothillsblanketed by clouds.We picked up rocksand guessed wildlyat their provenanceGranite? Shale?and threw them backinto the wateror ricocheted themoff boulders to skipthem far into the deepand I wonderwhen you are olderwill you see these flightsas random chanceor as probabilitiesunpredictable, but known—and will […]
Snowflakes at the border of freezing, emphatic, sizeable— few transition points are so lovely here are the last moments before free-fall, tipping into the inevitable knowing, knowing well, it didn’t have to be this way
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
Every morning is a shore this one as much as any other Some precipices hold an allure but not this one not anymore
You ask every day now what is distance I point to the mountain white and still as an etching foreshortened and rising as if from the lake you are now gleaning that words are slippery fish two-faced wide-eyed dull or gleaming depending on which way the scales lie
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 […]
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
OPTIONAL POETRY 