[Descant] A strange thing, this geometric city living. The night sky is always pink here, with residual heat— I’ve never seen a star, only the boxy glow of the higher high-rise, the landing lights of planes swallowed up by clouds (I assume) no birds, no breeze, just isolated trees and the audible gradients of interminable descent, and I always wake up tired. Selah.
Sudden blue like a blow who knows from when or where it comes from the viaduct the Bay shines today like a blank page so very full of promise– but how it does get taxing, all this hoping and hoping, and hoping–
Here another summer day like any other just like any other and between being left and leaving I know which I prefer– Unsettling wind I wake to news of fire on the butte and the power gone out and KOZI off the air and level 3 orders to get out now and a pile of dead goats at a ranch that burned overnight and horses run off like open-ended questions– Only a slight haze, here, a tinge of regret, chagrin, I am far away, […]
By one the sky was evening-dark by two the sky had split and rain fell like it hasn’t in months and the city breathed a sigh of relief– and yes it’s want that makes abundance but love sometimes you keep me waiting when even a minute is one too many
Never a direct course so not unlike a sail we turn up the wind shifts and then we must fall off but always arrive an evening shore a sky open like arms and unlike a sail it’s such joy to be becalmed
Cool rain waning moon a mud-drab marsh bird troubles the water the reeds don’t stir a mineral air rises from the silt soil the littoral so literal I plant my feet in earth that is also part water and returning know a return is also always a departure [I’m back! Was defending a thesis in a completely non-poetry-related field, am now enjoying life as a Master of Science]
I don’t know why I opened windows to let in such heat or why I’m almost tempted to sleep outside if not that there’s no such thing as safe or shelter might as well accept it the offer of fresh air and the way the day falls off into night and wakes with a chill blue moon you know just what I am here for
Silence is a thirst answered by sand a couple hours is a drought a day would be the end
Every song is more songlike– the cloud’s coloratura above the lake, birds carrying fish gripped in feet like good luck charms, for some at least, life it gives and takes, a talon or a hand is just one sort of cage, these gnats form another, atomic cloud -like above lily pads, the water dark and slack but for slow bubbles, small spheres, trapped air returning to air, entropy, natural order, beauty, everything in concert, live, […]
Bird Song #2 Passerine birds have perching feet, all songbirds are passerines– I was unsure at first, feeling more a tinamou, penguin, or skua in worst moods, but having lit upon this branch and begun to sing, I would now need a beak to hide this grin, even in flight I am calling, look, look just what the years have taught me after all, three toes forward one toe back–
OPTIONAL POETRY 