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...
All gifts are temporary The sun, the moon, the stars Stripes on the backs of chipmunks Beaver tracks in the mud. This morning It was a troop of robins Busking for worms Their bouncing advancements timed To a foghorn of cows. Meanwhile The rising sun Didn’t believe in a thing Not me, not you And the...
The delicate, white-feather legs of a thistle seed run upstream with the wind. The fragile physics of a miniature tumbleweed ballet make it magically spin against the weight of mountains while standing still until this exquisite balance fails and must wait to find its moment again downstream from where you brace your feet against the...