North Fork of the Skykomish
She stands in the hurry of the river.
Sunlight bends among Sitka spruce.
Memories loll in shady places and
beneath stones, nudging her. Summer
pales. A crispness threads the air.
Golds and reds and muddy greens.
The voice of the river is strong, bright
and lifts her out of the present
that has shredded her as grief will.
Her feet grow numb
and she hopes that will spread, up
to legs and arms and head, through muscle and bone.
Far off, ravens screech, jagged, reckless cries.
She imagines them taking her into the sky,
even just in dream or momentary lapse.
It’s all bewildering, loss
and the unsparing tick of time.
Thursday Night
One clap of thunder at the foodbank last night
and several downpours which made everything
miserable though people were thrilled to find garlic
and loaded up, more than they should have.
But who am I to say that’s enough, though
you have to, so there’s some left for others.
You can say this in a kindly tone.
I don’t know why I was concerned about people
not having enough to eat as a child except – Catholic.
I made up lists of food as if they somehow,
miraculously, would be delivered to the hungry –
16 loaves of bread, 8 steaks, 30 boxes of Cheerios,
all random which was the point and though
I’m no cook or even one to care much about food,
here I am bagging produce and making
small talk about romaine lettuce and dragon fruit
and helping people figure out how many oranges
you get for two households of 7 and 5 respectively,
which is difficult because my math skills are crap.
Fall gently
Fall gently
as liquid
into sleep
and carnival,
pink speckled
rocks anchor
the shore,
dust in the air
settles
in the fiddle
of a broken
hour, the trick
of a minute
and a half
with sorrow
goes the whale song,
like fate
and furious
fortune, no
ending, nothing
hanging
from the bridge
Scientific Curiosity
I am hope-broke, tasting smoke,
watching the waters recede, the stranding,
birds’ eggs, pale and fissured,
crescendos of glaciers.
I am sorrow-choked, witnessing
oil coiled on the sea surface,
blackened wings in a clotted glut,
dead fish like a pack of cards scattered
on the crusted beach.
I am hollowed and stormed and scooped
out. So breathless is the echo
of fallen trees, so suffocating the crawl
of relentless heat, wavery, as if spirits
were rising to admonish us.
I am stalled and bewildered
at the end of a fractured year
where time melds with chaos
and questions wrap around us like strangler figs.
What are we but poachers on this ailing earth,
taking, with and without guilt, the crumbs
of our appetites dusting every dark crevice,
every flat gold plain.
Winter’s Reach
As the wind illuminates
the vigorous hills, pine and fir
slip from shadows, a lick
of sunlight crests the snow-dusted horizon
where morning falls to the thickness
of mid-day, where the thrust of a day
pales to dusk in strings
of gold and violet, linked
by birds swimming from tree
to tree with tender pause.
How it all folds into night,
an absence and a starry weight.
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