wave

Pacific Ocean, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Creation

creation is like wielding the mystery for a moment
being given the chance to turn the nautilus over in
your hands and awe for a few precious flashes
its precise and perfect structure, wonder at being
given transubstantiational power, snippet of the
infinite, devotional on the unity of all the cosmos
unraveled, a glittering equilibirc instant

Driftwood, grass, trees, stones. Image, my own.

Shit That Makes Poets Laugh

a couplet of haiku
getting to write the word
Uranus
espousing astrology while
being an unbeliever
writing all the people
you know into poems
recording the natural
world and wishing for
more smell words—the
olfactory is important,
man, and so under
expressioned—playing with
all mediums of art– music,
history, science, language,
painting, sculpture, theater–
being a badass generalist
the fact that mostly poets
read your poems
realizing that everything
is art, and it’s easier
than you think to tell
someone to fuck off
trying to figure out
if anyone really has an
editor? (Maggie Smith,
in my dreams you’re
reading this and cutting
and slashing, and un en-
jambing to your heart’s
delight.) Hearing that
one of Mary Oliver’s
best poems, ‘Wild Geese’
was an exercise, and
experiment in end-
stopped lines performed
for another poet, a magic
trick (hear Krista Tippet’s
interview with Oliver
on her unparalleled podcast
*On Being*)
realizing that your fly is
down, thank you John
Craigie
trying to figure out the
infinite mystery while
trying to figure out
american politics while
simultaneously realizing
that life is built on water
looking up the word ‘word’
in a thesaurus
realizing that you
should have hidden an
easter egg in all of your
work and you’ve forgotten

Libra Season

As Libra season concludes, I’d like to
invite all of us to love a lot of Libras
for the next few days. Like
my triple air massage therapist,
bless her. And my best friend of
all time, he could not be more elegant and
nuanced in his approach to the world, and people
who I don’t even know, and people I once knew
all air signs, maybe it is the open-hearted
pleasers, balancing their relationships, the “we”
that Libras present, it’s that fire in me that
always gets stirred up by the scale and measure,
skin and bones, maybe it is the quality of the
breeze this time of year that makes me
fall in love with Libras, a little more each
October, regardless, I breath the unruly whips
of Wind and Rain, the scatter of leaves,
the romance of dying with Libras in mind

Hunter’s Moon. Super Moon. Full Moon. October 2024. Image, my own.

Chap Book
best is the open
chap book on the soul leave it
vulnerable in air

Lovng Hard (no i)
Sussing and figuring
and preparing and
planning as to how
to love
difficult people:
Drive the Bus,
Like Mo Willems’
Pigeon, in the
front seat
Self-assured, ready
Without license, but
there is no playbook
to love these difficult,
purposeless individuals
NPCs, people who have,
a bit, burned out on life
Who see the end, but
seem to have no ideas
on wellness or whole
ness- are not willing or
able to take the reins
any longer, who are
Offensive and rude
Blunt without purpose
Unmeasured in their
Aimless wanderings
through Time and
Space, Pretentious in
their lack of attention
to others, Tough

Summer Triangle. Oregon, October. Image, my own.

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, plus Polaris, Back Porch (August 2024)

Darkness

darkness comes,
bats chirruping on
the midnight hunt
for insects

pulsing chant of druid
crickets, matching
heartbeats, and
the tiny slip and creak

of the garden sail
sounds like no monster
you were expecting,
the stars are out

still and fixed until
a glance, the look-again
shows they’ve migrated
to new horizons

moved to another sphere,
other longitudes in the
deepening blackness, thank
god for this space,

this slow-moving, untethered
rest in all the wearied
world, ever more
transfixed

on the clear scent of
the stream, softly
rolling with last
night’s rain

the dark becomes
more friend
than day with this
rhythm of the universe

coursing through
rivers of stars
above, all one needs
is to sit, be, listen

observe the silken quiet
of the moment,
the breath of trees in
the waves of breezes

let go the day
where the push and pull
of the world leaks
all over your conscience

be, rest, breathe
evolve, inhale the
thousand whispered
nutrients of darkness, night

The Club of one Kid, a solo retreat somewhere, July 2024

Rowdy

Feeling rowdy
uppity

energetic
overly-jazzed

sometimes I listen
for the school

secretary to call
down and check me

out of class
Hall pass!

Freedom.
Ambulation.

An uninhibited
walk-about

Maybe I’ll go to
Scotland or France

Sometimes I
weep uncontrollably

Though I probably
could ‘control’ it

I don’t wat to,
sometimes

I feel undone
definitely not

crazy
more like that

song where Dave
says you could

look inside the person’s
skull and see

their mind,
what’s on my mind

is ‘x’ marks the spot
just above my heart

it just keeps coming up,
and loneliness

sometimes on account
of the ‘y’ but

I’m okay with ‘z’
fantasies for now

wanting to escape
or wanting to feel

it may go either way
a spectrum of emotion

Quantum Dreams

I dreamed about you last night.
The most sweet, ephemeral vignette.
We were sitting in my car.
You were in the passenger seat.

We were both sleeping, in sound repose.
The view from the car was stunning
The sun was setting over a gorgeous canyon
Or maybe it was rising.

That’s the quantum question.
Molten crimson and fuchsia flung into the cerulean air
Reflected in the clouds over vermillion sandstone and chalky copper-oxygenated azurite.
You woke.

I stirred.
We were both still groggy from the sleep,
and the car was warm and comforting
with our shared body heat.

You turned to me and said quietly… “That was so nice.”
And I smiled.
Content.
As the dream faded, just as peacefully as it began.