Great arc of sky,
Steady,
Allowing suns
passage across,
Over
And
Sideways.
Now afternoon’s turn
Has come to be,
the long bridge over short night.
Author: SamF
The PMD Chronicles. Page 1.
April 20, 2021
Western North America
Before the wind blows, the morning will hang raw and sunny. There is a bare urgency that hangs in the leaves of a cottonwood looming over everything here. The trembling leaves now might tell us the waiting is nearly over. The air has a stretched stillness to it, about to break time’s pace open to its whims.
We will participate, now into this day hammering into every crevice of the bank, through every stone, and seeping into our bones. The sun still shines warm and bright, the sky can easily pull you away.
Later, thunderstorms will build over the hills ringing the valley, deepening our backdrop, focusing our will into the hope that change will happen. This will turn, and leave us again in stillness. And we move with the water’s rhythm, pushed by wind into the next bend. Here we might stop and see the first of evenings bugs pulled upward, or tumbled along the water’s steady surface. A trout might even take a grab here or there, teasing us with their sudden disappearances after we think we’ve figured them out. We lean and ponder, search water, feel wind, absorb a big sky alive with later afternoon. This is where all else falls away.
That day
She first asked me in that cloying way,
When things are up for hiding.
She asked me again,
When I shook my head not hearing this go.
And then she asked
if I remembered that tiny piece of March,
And how it dug deep into our skin
And lasted
Until we couldn’t bear it any more.
How Fall turns to Winter
After the rain came,
In a great pulsing return,
Like old friends reconvened,
Their hiatus, of generations,
Watching salmon move on
From the filling pools,
Only to falter in skinny water,
And return to the quiet depths,
And hopefully sweeter respite.
.
With storm winds fading over night,
Days resume their routine:
Morning’s great bridge aglow,
Providing free passage,
To the quiet witnesses
Of nights reclaim.
Weeping
Tiny flashes of light sliding down,
Her tears reflecting Sunday morning,
Invited in
Through the wide windows,
open, lingering bright
over wide streets.
.
She draws music, slowly
To counter this urban jostling
Unknowingly sketching a memory
Just as the years turn to days,
And seasons linger on the palate,
While our scant strides,
sometimes made while leaping,
Are hardly noticed
In the narrow spaces above
this great wheel.
.
But that day.
Who knew,
The songs it pulled from her then,
just a pause now,
Goosebumps on a chilly night,
When a lamp might trace the path
From the lullaby memory of a city street,
To the damp path,
Through a new forest
Thriving in the rain.
Big Fish, Patience and Loss
How Fish bite
I once spent twelve years trying to catch a fish,
In one particular place
Deliberate in my fantasy
Lured on by this water
That fancied a fish.
And when it came,
In the space where afternoon
Begins to turn golden
And quiet,
But long before the time of frogs,
Or the last of summer’s blackberries
Cast their liquored spell,
A slow motion swirl,
A great heaving beacon across the flat water,
Slow motion, now,
In the way that memories become.
The jolt through arm and body
Letting out a great whoop,
Before it went silent again,
Suddenly.
And Evening resumed it’s course,
And I stopped counting in years.
Wait for Me
Wait for me
In the place past midnight
Where the second hand marches into eternity
Away from the banality of hours
And the drudgery of minutes
We are told these dark empty spaces
Should raise us from sleeps
Or at least tighten
Our fetal clutches
In some unmade terror.
But this is where we come to meet
And stroll freely through
These dark hills
Shouldering winding paths
Fringed in the bright flowers unfolding
After a passing spring shower.
The Topography of Rain (a rewrite)
These are songs we rehearse
Only to ourselves.
Feigning patience,
In the thick stagnation
When the wind fell away,
And the sun is all that is left.
.
This time of smoke
And old valleys
Sitting low, in their once verdant chairs,
Bosomy ranges now creaking, tight,
Under their own thirsty landscapes.
.
In this time of waiting,
Rhythms are scribbled across a dry creek bed:
Brittle choirs of sand and pebble,
Playing to a listless audience,
Muted in dust.
How the Rain Might Visit
These are songs we dare speak
Only to ourselves
While we wait
Patiently
Through the thick stagnation
We encounter somewhere
Between summer and fall
When the wind falls away,
And the sun is all that is left.
.
This time of smoke
And old valleys
Sitting low, in their once easy chairs
Of coastal ranges gone tight
And creaking
Under their own thirsting landscapes.
.
You can just about hear the memories:
Water-worn tales amidst the dust and rounded gravels,
Once verdant glee,
All gone brittle,
In this time of waiting.
The Solstice Snare
Even now, A thin glow hovers over summer’s dying sky.
The clock chimes ten,
the pull is there:
tomorrow will be imperceptibly earlier than today
And the next day will check out just a wee bit sooner.
And so on.
We said our last goodbyes sometime the evening of June 26:
the latest sunset of the year.
It didn’t pass off in fireworks and cheers. In truth, the night before seemed grander: an open sky, first stars, and night herons,
Squawking from the inky darkness painted in twilight’s corners.
Sunset was a scant few seconds earlier that night.
With no hint of the big swing into winter commencing two days later.
.
But I digress,
It all began on June 14th,
When the sun broke the horizon at its earliest point.
Celebrations began,
As the coastal fog had not shown that night,
And birds sang loud, in a pre-dawn clamor,
Along with a rooster
Still in its coop.
.
Those 12 days of summer’s solstice,
Perhaps more magical in memories
Now that they are slipping away.
In the subtle agony of my machined throes:
hold on, rewind, see it again,
Like I missed something the first time through.
Like last year,
And the year before that.
And so on.
.
Now mid-July
This slow fall long resumed. Gently pulled.
Through the staleness of what summer will become
Into the honeyed glory of Autumn, and winter,
Days gone meek,
Where mornings struggle just to raise a voice,
Resigned to a short, hopeless bridge between nights.
.
Forget that we should hold these times.
Turn, instead, so that we might fly on golden wings,
Sparkling eyes,
Above this great turning wheel.
Shaken Rain 