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Snow Clouds
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The clouds are threaded with mountain-pink, andthe kind of muted purple that reflects from pondwater as it lies still at the moment of dusk, and the ravens blink the snow away, calling in their Cascade dialects, throaty songsthat catchin the fir needles like sunlight, and the snow falls in patches between the canopy and…
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Rain on the Ocean
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The ocean is waiting there, pock marked in the way that dew hangs from jeweled firs, how itmelts the soft snow beneath it, and farther out, the white painted light is made ghostly where the horizon meets it and the white foam fray and the clouds brushed and bruised and half the ocean drawn…
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Moonlight on the Windowsill
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I see the moonlight blank against the windowsill sunk into the grains of wood, into the etchings of pencils and pressed fingernails carved like insect-scarred walking sticks we used to find in the forest, and mossy flakes from screen windows open too long in the summer, and they are golden, far too golden, and…
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Fallow
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All of this—these windowless warehouses, these factories made, seemingly, of styrofoam; these used-car prairies that glare pink in the sunset. All of this used to be fields. Just ten years ago there was a cabin, there, made of rain-darkened wood, roof caving in, half rotten, clung over with moss, and there was a wagon…
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Far-Fallen Wind
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Night wind warmed by the creekside, its water running plump above milky stones, and a cedar branch brushed low by the day’s rain, its bristled fingers braided into shadow, tall as the ferns as the snowberry as the quilted sky, brown in its cloudlight and seaweed-blue between, the water perfectly silent against the far-fallen…
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And Still
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And still the owls find the low evening, their voices tangled in leaf litter and fog, and still the jays crackle wild-disguised as red-tails as hawks, and still the raccoons pig-snarl, their paws caked with dirt and blood, and still the cedar trees shiver, silver-eyed, ghostly against the setting sun.
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Sea Lions
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The sea lions bellow, their grumbles percussive behind the basalt towers and gull-stained wind, behind the open space cupped against your ears and the sand gritted into your mouth there they are, the sea lions barking like bears.
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Beginning of Time
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Maybe we can still remember the closed-in darkness long ago before we had eyes, and maybe we can remember the sensation of the jolting waters, thick with calcite and aluminum dust, the shallow ocean clicking against our keratin bodies, the dull, brainless consciousness softened into us, our lives dark and endless among the lacy…
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What The World Once Was
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This is what the world once was, low wind across dimpled grasslands, a warm, bruised sweep musked with far-pressed rain, gall oaks whistling as air falls through them. This is what the world once was, a far, clear view, long to the east, to the blue shoulders of the Gorge, the river tucked there,…
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Shoulders of the Sun
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It is early night. One side of the sky is bleached but halted, waiting for the rose-gold light to reach it, to slowly catch the edges of the kindling, the fibers curdled to a red so dark they are purple; a coagulated flame that simmers low, held steady on the shoulders of the sun.