Untitled
One tree's trunk and another's bough
climb into a dark sky
I lie in the warm water thinking to myself
wondering when I'll die
The oldness crept into my body and the worry in my mind
didn't quit as my bottle went dry
The billions of human souls and my unending luck
feel like tragedy's unlit coals
Far from the noise in a forest once logged
where the elk walk at will
And the river's run close, braided behind the dam
singing the mist into the air
The hills rise all around and a fiery mountain to the north
slush falls down
Switchback to switchback high in the clouds
where my mind lands now
The Wearing Off
Silent Quiet Coziness
The newness of a change
Seeks your delight
smells out your deep seated echos
Welcome labor
Long steps that think to spill
cold between the seams
seat under my coat
Heavy weight of water
swollen with warmth
Whip cracked and a hot hearth
flickering mantle
Three Minds
Science peered skeptically at Faery
While legend stood akimbo in a garden
Faery glowered back at the numbers
They argued about
whose people were most fair and noble
as though they were gods
followed and worshiped
Until one day they saw
their people were all the same
Unquenchably curious spinners of yarns listening and reading as though it was air
Everything is Damp
Even the copper bark of the Madrona tree is ruddy
and the Moss and Fens and Fungus grow everywhere now
The land is dark and wet and the colors are grays, browns and greens
The cold seeps in over time slowly
until the fingers don't work and I stumble around
The drips in the woods are indicators of their distance and
even the eel grass runs off the water
The sun can't get through
the silted water
running first left to right and then right to left
Far Away
A child wondered how
things work
And made up answers
when she didn't know
The world grew crystalized shapes that spread
Through space on contact and she knew the true answers
One day she walked through soaking wet stardust
A thick fog through blurred moonlight behind a shaggy fir tree
Looking far off where
her star might have been
and many more might be
At Home
Hallogen sparks peek through
they grey mist
Over a low muddy tide
in the bay
on late December
Bloody Noses
My first bloody nose landed my butt
on the concrete tears and shock
Pain and people deliver it?
My second bloody noses and I landed one
back the punch to the jaw
I delivered it too and the jerk of reaction?
My third bloody nose and I stopped it first
Push and shove and dig in and scrap and bob and weave and taunt
Cockiness as a dance.
One day I bloodied a nose and wasn't asked to stay.
Why did I swing?
Who am I again?
My fourth bloody nose and I got up to fight
but I only stood up.
Accepted the warm wet iron on my teeth and mouth.
I know who I am.
My fifth bloody nose will come and I will sit calmly
fold my hands on my stomach and ask...
“Why are you hurting?”
Two White Dogs
Lugnut and Old Boy bark at a four point buck
eating fermented apples
under a gnarled old tree
They bark at joggers
fit and annoyed
at the intrusion into their ritual
Two fluffy texans
french dogs left and rescued and
came home to the wet woods
the boggy hollow
Their shift starts before mine
Before I leave
And ends after mine
Before I sleep
They howl at the sirens
of police and firemen
heralds of needed help
And they greet the delivery
people so that they know
they may not stay long
They ward off the wild things
the raccoons and opossum
and yell at the uncaring ravens to begone
And the Coyote's call
the yammering yelps
sing a song of battle in Ranger's heart
so he paces back and forth and whines – “Let me at em!”
Then in the evening
they come inside, fences secure
treats and headrubs and wrasslin
Until we all sleep
Rex on the couch, sprawled out and
Ranger next to our bed, childishly close and wary as Cerberus
Four lbs and fit in one hand
and on my mind
NO
In my mind like mycelium on a forrest floor.
Flushing like mushrooms
with the seasons or rain or trauma or joy
She left home
but my mind still leaves room for her
and what is left and still
Like a tree that thinks the fungus is still there
that makes strange gloaming melancholies and whispers
She is still on my mind, in my heart and my soul.
The pieces I gave her freely are gone.
I'm detached armor, shield and sword
on a rack at home if she decides she needs them
But the rust is coming because she doesn't
Protector with no root.
Fast wisdom and a slow body never made me mad before.
But now I am
The wind in the city
has so many names
No portent of the weather
No kiss of far off trees
It has addresses
and shorter lifespans
Brought about by smaller changes
manmade and unexpected
The 4th ave breeze from rush hour
The Broadway gusts bourn of channeled winds
Whistling in the subways
and
trees
and
tunnels
But the four Wild Winds
old as time
Named for the turn of the earth
Children of the Rising and Setting sun
Great siblings of the seas
Patient carvers of mountains and sometimes angry rotations.
Constant their fickle
Their children the clouds in tow or behind
Sailors and Fishermen know them
Mountain climbers know them
The people of the city know them
but most by their children and grand children
and their doppler echos
Like the broadway gusts
flitting to and fro
without stopping
at the whim of...
The Four know the children of the earth
As Gods almost eternal paying heed to the times
With reckless abandon
Girdling mother earth pole to equator