Light Post 69

Words are never enough. To describe it. Life. The ending of it. Last night on the bridge. Not night, daylight still, sunset or almost. The warm day disappearing into the windy fog of evening. A crowded crossing. The pedestrian path scattered with people, their eyes obscured by camera lenses. At the crest of the bridge, the boy swings himself up by the light post and lands catlike on the lip of the balustrade. He is young as boys are, black haired and carelessly clothed. He hovers, higher than anyone dares to be. So brave and stubborn. Then he leaps out, his arms and legs bent back as if diving into the slippery calm of a pool. The light flashes on the metal struts of his belt. He is glittering. Free. The cameras remain pointed toward the water and the islands which crowd the bay. The cars cross back and forth from one tip of land to another. Nothing stops, or shifts, or stutters. Nothing changes. The water is too far below to sound his arrival.

A Year of Living

I spent the close of 2006 with my sister in her adopted city, Brooklyn, NY. So much has been said about New York, so many lives tossed in its throngs. I too love the energy of it, its relentless humanness. Everything the modern ages holds dear, asphalt, high rises, a profusion of goods on display. But by the 5th day I dreamed of mule deer, ears thrush with ticks. I dreamt a hillside dense with evergreens.

When I finally made it back to the state park in which I live, I put on my waterproof boots and tromped past the old barns through the mud and brush a half mile to the seasonal waterfall. In the winter, the water pounds the six foot drop, sounding as loudly as the city I had just fled. But unlike the cars and people that travel Brooklyn’s street, the creek is without past or future, without attachment to its own present tense. The rush of water over the rocky face of earth simply is. Its music is not music, is not organized by time. It sounds timbre, the color of.

The day after New Years I rise before dawn. Driving up the valley I see a buck, its neck burdened by antlers. At the crest of the ridge, a coyote walks its leisurely dawn. In this place, this small expanse of something other than human ambition and need, I can breath. It is a life less compelling than the urbanity of others. I write as if to compensate for my disinterest. The coyote pauses at the edge of the road, turns its head to me. Nothing I have ever said or done matters. The moon writes itself in her features.

a welcome of sorts

this is less of a blog than a shameless attempt to get myself in cyberspace - a sort of aborted shuttle launch. i will be posting new work and maybe even some bloggish type things in the coming weeks.