The circling song of a Swainson’s thrush
Signals summer’s arrival one drizzly morning,
Painting everything all at once,
Green and lush.
Category: poems
When the River Went Away – Part IV – Afterwards
The mockery of their happiness lingered into the years
Long after the places they lived had blown away across the fields
I can’t remember the tree when I visited them then,
But now its heavy branches reach out, holding this place
In mid-summer, when the grass turns golden yellow,
When the old men change topics from weather to iced tea perhaps,
Someone lingers through the field, stopping here and there
And I wonder if they are standing on the places where the lives
Of an old couple passed through, holding hands, laughing,
Bereaving and all the things that get marked in subtle ways
And now cause people to pause in their steps and look across.
When the visitors came back from the field, their eyes are focused
But easy, in the way that walking across time can do.
Exuberance
Long before you turn westwards
To face the coming of storms.
Long before this time.
Lying there, huddled despair,
Curls of innocence,
You silken breath now on edge.
Long before you turn, lingering,
Holding the shadowy forgotten muses
The old exuberance of dreams
From a waking morning
When Spring and sun
Rang eternal promise,
And tingled joy.
Long before all this,
Let me hear your woes, regrets
And all the sinful exhortations.
Before you run pure
Into summer’s long eve.
Evening Endings
Don’t start poems past bedtime.
The words swirl about, mingle and change.
Words that toss and turn.
The scenes in dreams become the poems.
Poems evoke dreams
Under blank paper blankets.
Regardless, don’t start poems at night, past bedtime.
Winter Day on the Queets
This is a sketch of a day spent on the Queets River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. It was a day of catching and releasing wild steelhead and sea run bull trout. Everything was cold and still here, and at the end of the road, it seemed as though I was the only one around. This is a place a long way from anywhere, but somehow in the midst of the soul of something bigger than me. Ironically, the day seemed to be almost a mix of unplaced anxiety over this sudden solitude and awestruck fascination with a place I have wanted to visit for so long. Here I found that the thin line between unplaced fear and ecstatic exuberence runs through the trees, along the river and up the hill.
.
In the trees, there is no luxury of imagining summer,
As I follow a thin faint line, draped over stick and stone.
Tracing a path of hope across these shadowy woods,
I now know each breath, short and seen,
Each thought, passing and glancing,
While nighttime fidgets and snarls wherever I lean.
.
When the way out is momentarily forgotten,
Where the single frail thread is hidden under moss and bough,
A chill courses through my spine, rippling across my brow.
.
Along the river, to my utter surprise,
Wrapped in high haze were grand winter skies!
Cast in a muted sun, hung low over high tree
This theater of emptiness sees night briefly flee.
.
Now, surely, a desperate reprieve from winter’s meddles,
To wash away that shuddering thought:
That out here, daylight is a cruel trick,
Luring me into its seasonal plot!
.
Oh, forget the water sounds,
Wind through trees, silent soaring birds.
Forget these tones of wild place!
For they were swallowed, broadside and whole
By a darkness lingering at every space.
Easing into Now
The hard line of rain is drawn across the sky.
Marking the place where even the restless wake
From a sleep they so patiently waited for.
When the River Went Away – Take III: A Gothic Halloween
A half open window
Buffeted by wind
Creeping through doors and cracks
Of a hollow house standing tall
In golden seas:
. Hosts of October’s departure.
.
Wind shuffling papers off a dusty table
Scattering and sliding along dark wooden floors.
.
On the table, the long swoop of her fingers
Catches the last, late sun:
. Bony knuckles in pale skin.
.
Little games the wind plays:
. A back door slams shut,
. Sneaking open again.
.
Her eyes, silent and empty:
. A blank stare across fields of time
. Become rusted playgrounds.
At just the right angle:
. Sparkling. Just then.
.
She’s sat here for a hundred years:
. Maybe longer,
Beside this window to the wind.
.
Messages, there are none
Until a warm gust,
Catching her grey hair,
.
Sprawled fingers curl then loosen
.
Warm tidings rippling through the grass
Knocking on a window
Where she’s waited for so long.
.
On a gust, the door flies open
Like a deep breath through the rooms
And for just a moment
The faintest, sweetest smell,
Like wispy memories of life,
She thinks.
.
Now the sudden hush of stillness.
.
All so warm and easy
This tall house, leaning on years
Fingers grasping for the last of the light.
.
And the warm, sweet smell of her passing still lingers here
As October’s stories scatter across dark skies and warm winds.
When the River Went Away – Part II – The Wind
A skylight guides the sun across a solitary houseplant,
Sitting high, leaves perched,
For another filtered afternoon.
Her pale, bony hands,
Long fingers fidgeting, waiting,
Don’t notice how they play in the light.
.
Outside, a cold, dry wind whirls up dust,
Roadside greetings on the edge of town.
Across the street, dry leaves
Scattered in crackling waves
Erase any hope summer might linger here.
.
A couple trails the sidewalk,
Clutching bags, heads down,
Maybe mustering the courage,
thinking they can catch sail
And pass over the ridge
One at a time.
.
Away from the leaves,
behind the shriveled mass of a car
Unmoving for months,
A dog lies in the dirt.
.
Sitting along the storefront, the cheapsters,
Puppeteers of badness, now wilting and fading,
Propped up briefly by a cigarette passed amongst them,
Go on thinking the game is still on,
Though their eyes are hollow,
Echoing the wind.
.
Soon the skylight will recount her life,
Moving across the far wall,
Framed in awkward moments,
That never really happened that way.
A draping cobweb catches the light
Almost like it could connect the story.
Dust floats and sparkles,
Airy reflections of illumed times.
That brief light.
.
Her fingers set onto the dishes now
Hot soapy water,
Cold sunshine pouring through a kitchen window,
A plate, a bowl, dinner, breakfast and snack
All passing through shiny, wet fingers,
Those fingers,
Still deft in their movement,
Still alive with song, and the stories
Her gesturing hands could tell.
.
Rough Thoughts on the Stratigraphy of Small Streams
October afternoon:
The fate of a single alder leaf
Drifting down,
might have been sealed
Long before the tree.
.
Now
Is less about early afternoon breezes.
More about lingering mornings,
Not yet ripe and flavored
With neatly packaged memories of summer.
.
This leaf floats through air
not yet lacquered in winter,
But stained with the patina of a mid-day sun
That hides swimming holes and watermelons.
.
Still,
This is time for one more earful of cricket song,
frog speak,
Stinging mosquito bite.
.
Where the leaf lands,
tastes of dust in cool woods.
.
Creeks move in tiny whispers here,
If they haven’t gone forgotten.
.
When the River Went Away – A Prelude
The biggest surprise of them all,
Rows of sad houses
Lining rusty streets.
.
Where rain fails hopeful gardens
Again and again.
Every corner, trails of thigh deep woe
Stacks of mailboxes
Sheltering misery
From the grind of days
Mixed in hazy, medusa skies.
.
Each door playing the same story
Neighbors, but a chapter apart.
Street by street,
The same book written again and again,
Nail by nail.
.
A fading bumper sticker
Plays bold music,
Almost in hormony
With a tuneless flute,
From behind drawn curtains
And a window left open.
Shaken Rain 