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.
Category: poems
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.
Late Afternoon That Never Left
Late afternoon, University
Where the sun catches bleachers
Casting time across the tiniest slice of playing field.
A staccato “Hup! Hup!”
“Hup!” Of a frisbee scrimmage.
.
“Here!”
.
The hum of a campus in early summer,
Where the players’ cries, hoots and woots
Tick away a timeless place between the
Hourly bell toll.
.
On the seventh lap around the rubber track,
That echoing bell marks religion
Just in case we missed it.
.
A light breeze ruffles tree tops above the stadium
While down here, all is still
Just foot steps, slap of hand on frisbee,
sound of breeze in this still field,
Like a reminder of a world out there.
.
“No! No! Here!”
.
An easy time filled with gentle ripples
You know, the kind that form when
Memories, place, sound and light
Move together.
.
The kind that pull up poems
From that time I sat with her at the beach
And gently reached my arm out to hold her.
From then on, the distance between us grew.
It was the last time we felt the wind together.
.
Now,
Summer,
Rolling in enamel bliss
That will not wear off over a
sky shadowed, cast in vapor
Illumed by the fading light of an afternoon:
Like when Autumn became Spring
for just one day.
.
That was what we remembered
When we didn’t know that this kind of day
Not the faintest idea,
That today could be the richest of them all.
.
Maybe because it was the quietest.
Like I said:
Late afternoon summer.
The bell tolling another hour
Like some silly notion
That time might be slipping by.
“Ha!”
Pretty Girls Telling Soft Stories
Her stories might go unheard over the sparkle in her eyes,
The sweeping gestures of her unfolding arms,
Or even the way she glances down
As if to gather another bit of grace.
.
The tale could be any old thing,
Mustered up from random memories,
Told in the plainest of ways.
.
But in her words;
Words that seem to catch the first morning sun,
Those rays that fall across the wooden table,
Simple, soft illuminations
Like a summer afternoon yawn,
Slipping into the slumberous, the sublime.
.
Her stories are of all things:
Big and small,
Near and far,
Hoped for and gotten.
.
Or maybe the words speak nothing,
While they bring life to everything around.
18 Days of River
Me, craving just one more day of river.
As the first storm passes,
With another racing in tomorrow nite.
Craving a river now familiar and routine,
Now suddenly on the cusp of fading into winter.
.
Meanwhile…
The sophisticates sit in the window-side table
Sipping their wine, pretty smiles and all.
On any other day, they would be girls,
Even angelic visions of beauty,
With the slightest turn of her head
Catching the light in a sparkle.
.
For a moment, I think
It’ll be better than the last time, the first time,
Every other time,
In that strange way things can be familiar
But seem new again.
.
Now, the window-side sophisticates look
More like a picture frame stuck in a hallway
Where nobody pauses.
Cruel.
Like a gift of time,
to the old man who never gives up.
.
On the way to the liquor store to grab a pack of smokes,
Something to hold on to while the line swings tight,
And straight,
Chasing one more day of river,
One more…
.
Me: Two day old socks, still dry,
no apparent odor yet.
Wet gear hangs from a line strung inside the truck,
While boxes full of damp and matted flies
Lie strewn about, everything scattered now,
Unlike the pictures I took, looking so neat then.
Sophisticated, maybe.
.
Shaken Rain 