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
And here I am, againseeking the simplest solace the flicker of pinkin an underwing don’t know if you saw itwhich tips me over again, the elegant branchingof a dormant magnolia like alveoli againstthe darkening sky but too brittlefor breath, also but this illusionof inertia is beguilingfor once flight seems franticor perhaps just out of reachto stay rooted exactly here without even the weightof a thought of returning no movement no reckoningthat might be fine
All night the snow sliding off the roof the tattoo of freezing rain yielding to sun at dawn the deer came quietly up in the yard moving slowly in the deep snow and not too warily the landscape softned the foothills blanketed everything settling and coming down to rest
On the other side of the pass it doesn’t flatten out exactly but without the trees the horizon appears everywhere lines of demarcation and a sense of expansiveness doing laps in our skinny skis we heard coyotes yap in the distance and the sun it set just a little bit later
A different kind of rain today, static, and a peculiar light cast up from the bay filtering through damp streets steel and glass a very high tide today they said- knowing what is beneath, now obscured, I can imagine it more clearly, vividly if less realistically, a strange tradeoff, and not an unwelcome one
More rain, and drowsy expectation— soon, something will happen, plans have been made, action will be taken, just not yet— the world outside remains discrete, drops on the glass each a microcosm of its own
Flood warning even the hills get treacherous side streets and alleys like tributaries water finds the fastest way or makes a way— before I would have made something of this, or tried—- now I just watch some guy out in the thick of it shouting and throwing rocks at the cars that pass by
We missed the countdown a TV delay screaming outside and the belated realization a ten second handicap on eating our grapes
Another bright day clear and cold as the sunlight is warm— Not to be begrudge this reciprocity or any— I get giddy climbing these impossible hills fully blinded, imbued by this particular winter sun, always coming in at high unexpected angles and intervals, falling in bars or like some ornate curtain to make any scene pastoral— orderly, quiet, serene, immutable— if only for a few hours, still, more than acceptable
OPTIONAL POETRY 