Still trying to distill my mental sketches…. a bit redundant from the previous notes, nonetheless a work in progress….

Inland, the river bends broad and wide,

Giving way to a brief valley.

If you are careful, the soul of this place still lingers

Though it is hidden amongst a scattering of dwellings,

The kinds of dwellings that are added on to over the years

And either gather character, or become ramshackle

If you are not careful.

Wonder through here during the middle of May,

What hasn’t been said of Springtime in the valley?

Warm morning rain, light as a whisper,

Painting flowers across fields between the homes,

And sharpening the songs of birds.

But look closer and see an old tractor here and over there,

Rusted fossils of days when things moved here,

In the space between hard work and lazy sunday afternoons,

When the kids would skip stones across the river.

The metal-sided shop, banged, dented and dulled, surrounded in blackberry vines,

Only kept clear near a single door,

An oil stained opening to more rust, stories and passed toils.

Somewhere, in there, sometime,

Things just stopped,

But the smell of grease still lingers over

The tinge of mice and cobweb.

You don’t have to be careful in August,

The valley, it’s soul, is swallowed whole

By days of relentless sun and heat

That wilts blackberries into tangled, thorny masses

Covering once proud fences,

And soil baked into hard, aching sticker-ridden swaths

That will deny any invitation until the first cheating rain

Of late September.

Sun and heat that buckles metal, peels paint

And forgets the 16 days in May

When the soul of this place was able to pause

And exhale the long breath of relief.

The seed of a poem was planted while passing through the small valley flat that borders the river. I was taken by a sense that an old vibrancy still lingers here, but is continually swallowed whole each year. My sketches here aren’t intended to offend anyone, as this is a special place. For several days in May, spring gushes forth dotted with a warm, light rain in the morning that sharpens the calls of birds, brightens flowers in the grass and seems like this is the way it always should be. But today this seems an empty celebration, and echoes of old summers still rattle the metal siding of an old shop, once a celebration of new business, prosperity, hope:

When Friday night beers lasted into the wee hours,

Giving way to a lazy sunday, maybe church and an afternoon alongside the big pool where the trail runs down to the river bar.

Now, tractors, rusted fossil heaps of dreams of better days,

And the old metal shop building that will groan again

in the summer heat soon to follow,

Now blackberry vines reach, before they wilt and tangle their thorny grasp around rusted projects

Along with everything else, on hot, windless afternoons.

All this has gone forgotten, or left for other times and new places, or just stopped.

It’s hard to tell on days like today.

Soon, summer will surely bake the ground into a hard, aching cracked memory

Of the place we see today,

And the old shack at the back of the field, quiet today

Again. The residents might stir once or twice,

But, passing by, we can’t help but wonder if they too lie in tangled heaps

Of the memories of life, family and stories that once filled the valley.

Now, while the river still runs fresh and cool, they haven’t noticed, or woken,

still sleeping hoping that these days are a dream and the 16 days of May

are just the soft pillow to whittle away their time.

The circling song of a Swainson’s thrush

Signals summer’s arrival one drizzly morning,

Painting everything all at once,

Green and lush.

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.

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.

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.

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.
.

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.

.