The wind up, the tenor Gregorian chant wind chime is making its music (and I don’t hear the echoes from 1992 tonight, G.’s porch in Freeville, New York in the alcoholic madness and snow, soprano, alto, tenor and bass.) The temperature drops but only slightly, and I hear the horn of inbound (particle board, paper bags, pallets) Willamette & Pacific train. Car tires on Oak Creek Road, speedy, spinning, going home, going somewhere. How long, really, can this life we lead hold?
I also hear the frogs. One of the cats lounges on the lounge chair. Somewhere, half a world away, the streets are marble, slippery when wet. The light as it leaves turns blue, tinging, white-blue really, maybe Joni Mitchell would write a song about that. The wind where the Pace flag’s posted dies, is resurrected, dies again. I will never understand these eddies, these windy waves.
The yellow jacket trap sways—another eddy of wind?—and the light turns from blue to whitish yellow, I swear I’m going to see pale violet yet. The trees grown fifty feet taller since we arrived here, August 1998, are a silhouette against this freakish, warm night sky. The light from the lamp I left burning in the bedroom is amber and quiet, sends a message of solitary laced with nothing profound. The hair I’m growing—so I can pull it into a pony tail like those stylish Venetian women—blows in front of my face. I realize: I have no idea how to live, really, let alone how to end a poem.
I am out here in the night, increasing. More frogs, more tall tree silhouettes. It’s easier to see this screen on the laptop but I think I would give that up to have another person willing to try to remember what it’s like to have a single, authentic moment.
The public domain painting above is “Ville-d’Avray” by Camille Corot in 1870.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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- Publication News: Ghost Town Poetry 20th Anniversary Anthology, Volume 3 - November 7, 2024
- Wishing Tree - November 4, 2024
