The path from here must be instinctively traced each breath avowed to relational space all thought attribution all feeling atavistic The way rain and snow dance across an interval of shadow scaling in and out of form the way stars darken toward us until our struggle to see them ceases and we are secretly...
Bare branches, you were dark lead around each colored pane. You outlined every piece of winter blue, then the wet violets and gold crocuses of spring. You caged gray flocks of mourning doves, embraced the satin strips of green breaking through black dirt, cupped a cloud, scored the yellow...
The wind is a river that cannot be dammed up; it flows Through life here in this Chinook country, and you Can embrace its sound or it crazies you. It forever Funnels through that high pass to the Southwest, snaps tall evergreens And bends young saplings to the ground, brings On...
The saddle between two peaks the sleeping figure’s waist, one peak her shoulder, the other the smooth contour of her hip. She is asleep, deeply asleep. She is dreaming of the colors of flowers, the songs of birds. When she awakens she will prop herself up on one arm and stretch the other...
Which streaks the woods road at noon — Shade or sun, Across the nature of the other one? Do shadows, shapes of leaves and limbs, Take all the light And leave, except for minor errors, night? Or, is black the habit of summer sky? And flawing his blindness, Only shooting stars Behind the walker’s...
When I talk to them, they listen, sitting beside me on the road, waiting to hear their names. I look over, into their faces & they stop what it is they are doing. I tell them how it is here, making a living, living the dream, getting by with things I don’t need; how...
Your grandmother watches lodgepole and poplar scatter morning light across a scrim of dust lifted from the skin of the earth I am trying to show you how the fallen tree nearby is a fallen tree and an expression of fallenness and this expression is exact Your grandmother moves from a stillness she keeps taking each step as though...
More a blur or mere winged premise of a bird in flight, he lit from nowhere on a mid-stream stone, studied me a bit, squat-jigged on a fringe of ice, blinked twice and went on diving riffles, unruffled, alone. ...
One night it will just pass Plain in the firelight. That thing you’ve been Hunting for so long, Suddenly right in front of you, Unafraid. As if everything, The cunning traps, The dogged trailing, Was all just for show. Some elaborate ceremony Of the inevitable. And now this No desperate chase, No revelatory Final showdown, Just a gentle meeting of eyes, A...
I’m driving the long way home. Meandering along a backroad meadow where I’ve stalled to breathe and watch the horses play. Let their blood and flesh, grazing knee-deep in fireworks of wildflowers, lift me. Why do I say “play?” Horses I’ve known up close shudder and twitch with nervous alert. Poor brutes, fenced to boredom, plagued with...