The crow’s wings are magician hands that flap and disappear through the swirl of animal souls and the gray marine layer of morning. The lake is gray too, ribbed by a breeze or by paddle boats, the same each day… Read More ›
nature imagery
Moss petting in Portland
I went back to Portland, and it was the same as it always was. We got behind the quadriplegic at the neighborhood wine take out and the clerk put her bottles on the back of her buggy in a basket… Read More ›
Weltschmerz
I have grown tired from too much poetry and these everyday ironies, have sunken inwards, as a spot in our lawn that’s slowly turned to a hole, now something we’re forced to address, the frost level come up, the remains… Read More ›
This time on earth
Where does it go, when the hair recedes—and why does it leave? And will I go like that too, without any notice but more a long, slow fade like snow thawing in a field— And are we just that then,… Read More ›
4:59, Friday
In my time of darkness I go back to the old haunts, to Raymond Carver: I closed the book and he looked back, and in the morning spoke to me on the toilet, in my bathrobe with my phone: He… Read More ›
An examination of spirit and self, told from beneath a sheet
When Dawn leaves town, Charlotte sleeps with me in our bed. Friday night, and she complained about the Brian Eno music, calling it spooky. So I carried the remains of that record with me up Cougar Mountain the next morning,… Read More ›
Crow call for April
The chicken brined and so did I, in a solution of salt, memories and music. That Easter in France with Rob and Paul roasting the lamb — then the one 30 years ago I had to work at the drug… Read More ›
Blurred passage to poem
How the poem appeared an object in the mist I paddled toward and circled round And though it was odd and lustrous, with living things nesting and squirming inside, it was too tall and slick for me to climb. Better… Read More ›
When the saints go marching in
Softly the deer who live behind our house burrow down in a patch of green at night, and in the morning appear outside the abandoned house next door like figurines. The house has been abandoned for three years since it… Read More ›
The jagged blades the thin white veil
In the gray light of morning the thin grass blades turned brown beneath the snow, the barn in the back, the sound of the heat through the vents, the coffeemaker, the keys clicking like teeth when I type: here, they all… Read More ›
