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Still Life of a Bedroom
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A jar full of shells. A beeswax candle. A jellyfish captured in glass. A paper lantern from Seattle; its cranes, yellow, splashed by the sea. Dried lavender in a vase, the flowers still purple, the stems both brittle and damp. A carved wooden owl. A Himalayan salt lamp. A carton of pencils made to…
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Summer Rain
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How soft the rain sounds, like pebbles flushed through a stream, click, and click, then all at once, like the inside of a wave as it breaks, polyphony, the voices and their colors. the shifting powders of soil, the ants and pill bugs drowned in soup-like puddles, the robins warmly puffed up, their eyes…
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The Shadows of Trees
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They stretch long; the wings of birds pulsed up in flight, silhouettes positioned on rust, orange as the backs of deer, sunlight quietly waiting.
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Desert Notes
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With each step the rocks are new Pink sunset, blue distance, pale but not brittle Against all my judgement I have the feeling that the rocks are alive We all move in the sun Naked, curled trees; one smooth branch of juniper in a slot canyon Raven on the sandstone gluck-gluck-click I am not alone…
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The First Stream in Utah
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You never loved the water more. You blink at the stream and feel that you are home, but even the cottonwoods are darker, and carry the bulk of firs. The stream is not so shaded that you can’t see your reflection and the naked mountain behind your head. This is your great river now; this…
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Dear Sky
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In the sky we find deep water Much like the glazed place on the open ocean; you know your reflection is there but you cannot see it. We call it the wandering place those of us who know what will happen to our questions, how they won’t be answered but swallowed into carpets of light,…
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Dusk Is Not A Summer Word
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Dusk is not a summer word Because when the sun is behind the mountains the sky still holds, high up, stretching onward and onward, even once it is fully night the light holds on, into a silence, cool and echoing, like the moment when the sun has left your skin as the lingering warmth drains away, and…
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Lost is the Daylight Moon
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There are times when I see the moon during the day, a grey-white cloud like the dying blossom of a wild onion, thin paper, peeled off, fragile and flickering and left behind in the dark autumn wind, and I stare, feeling that this moon is better suited to my sorrows, and I ask where…
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Who We Are
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Watch; if we stare at other suns, we won’t see our own, and if we block our eyes we will see nothing but darkness, but look straight into it into the scalding water, pierce the steam, and so dies the life of shadow.
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The Robin’s Reflection
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The robin flies into the window because glass does not shine like water; and there is another bird there, flat and strange and shimmering. This is the robin’s land of damp creeksides and there’s the nest among the maple towers, so he sings a song, beautiful and weaved of trills, and the sun moves along with his notes,…