it’s those in between days now the shock of cold at dawn but then the old familiar heat red flag watch east of the Cascades the fires taking off late the spiders out early even instinct stupefied it’s time to accept the tomatoes on the vine have gone mealy and sour there is a cost to holding out too long a loss in holding on I take the chicken wire off the garden beds and […]
they were all flickering like moth wings powdery and self-reflexive befuddled by the light or the darkness the enormity of it all you don’t see people like that pale as day moons voices soft as sunset sometimes confused and already receding leaving the hospital today the car in front of me ricocheted and spun as another car pushed it across the intersection until crumpled and steaming it finally came to rest these are the things […]
This is a language I can’t fully speak but clearly these waves break the way they break with intention. I couldn’t remember the topography of this beach, thought rocks not sand, misplaced the tree that straddles the void where the yellow clay blank was bitten by the surf, although I’ve been here many times as myself, and as someone else. There must be a shallow bar where the waves are breaking, beyond that, the steely […]
I watched the bear in the meadow and felt no fear a vignette at sunset not really a trait a descent tomorrow and already the night is rough against my skin animal misgivings lumbering in the tall grass the wretched unease of an eve
we took a vow of silence but it was anything but silent rivulets of water and thunder at the base of the falls— we tried to find stillness but it was anything but still filigree alder leaves flashing in the breeze the slow sway of pines and so we abandoned absolutes in lieu of ablution the staggering coldness of the river glacier-fed my heart beating again
I take us out to walk in the rain I suppose to shape your character but two is autarchic—- a litany of tribulation as we walk along runoff courses in the gutter and pools on the sewer plate so we fill them with buttercups then run away
can’t see the bay but there’s a river in the sky the world has gone gray without distinctions the ground slick with water the air thick with water traffic ground to a halt ribbons of cars suspended in motion above nothing a bridge is a structure or something that makes a connection this is an assumption and we’re getting nowhere fast
When does desire turn into greed what is an appropriate allotment of want unseasonably muggy in this forest water has cut a deep ravine beneath cedar boughs through carpets of moss it funnels and pools below perfunctory logs and drops again resisting direction this is the work it cannot be worked at I know this well and yet
a great displacement by such a small bird mostly beak and jewel-hued neck— all other motion stagnant below his arcs craning to look we are too late he rifles each page of the evening sky etches out some new invisible rune cleaves air from air we duck again as chunks of it come crashing down
The heart is not here, it can not, will not, be here— in all this rain, more than we’ve seen in several years. A rabbit darts through the overgrown lawn, now gone to seed, each blade a reproach. What hasn’t been done, what can not, will not. A sparrow ascends, becomes untethered. Motion is sometimes but not always distraction. The clouds oppress but containing is what breaks you. In their garden beds the radishes crack.
OPTIONAL POETRY 