the brightness of the sky/ overwhelms my eyes

i am always turning away from you. seven years of arrival and departure without continuance at the center, the motion away built into the motion toward. brightest love of my life from whom i must turn, whose desires i could not satisfy, after enough time, my own not matching yours. what can i do with…

Read More

your ideal girl

i’m in love with the hydrologic cycle, and i can take apart a live chicken, dance half-naked in moonlight and firelight, build a wall, plant a tree, recognize the difference between a covenant with you and a contract with the state, grow a ten foot wall of lush green cornstalks, and i almost always laugh…

Read More

avoidance

my hands are hardening as my heart softens. i try to hurry the process and things tear. blisters rise and sting. i bruise too easily, fall too fast. the massive cottonwoods humble and reduce me. i get small, laying on the patio, hurtling through space beneath a sky massed with leaves flecked with stars. the…

Read More

needs

to say, you are meeting my needs is also to say, i have needs and today, you fill them. it is also to say, i need you. dangerous ground, the breakwater, the undertow land pulling out to sea. i need you also means, i need for you to need me. and if not, then what?…

Read More

wet as rain

spring runs down from the mountains in leaping rivulets of muddy water, the red earth dark as blood with running. flowers fountain down behind the springing water, tumbling in wild falls of color. at the base of the mountains, collecting in pools and leafy groves, summer gathers and begins her long silken ascent, fingering each…

Read More

the well in you

your new lover is conversational in bed, doesn’t separate a space of loving from a space of daily living. you’re intrigued; the idea merits exploration. she’s tentative, her life is busy and different, and neither of you are sure what she wants. meanwhile i have taken the last step backwards off a similar cliff, the…

Read More

between the cracks

once on impulse, i planted a hollyhock seed in a crack between flagstones near the spigot, where the swamp cooler dripped erratically in the summer. the first spring, it put up four small sturdy leaves, and i watered it whenever i remembered. that winter came new love and large changes, and what with it all,…

Read More

letter home

garden catalog came today. we planted peas this week in the windy sunshine, kale & carrots. put in the spring poultry order– 47 chickens and 20 heritage turkeys, lean & dark & juicy, shipped in a raucous box next week. evenings are cold, still, and the wind is high. the weather service says sunshine, but…

Read More

wildflower

on good days, i move fast. faster than some men are ready for. but you’re so delicate, they say, such a lovely wildflower. as wise in the ways of this world as any wildflower, more engaged with pollen than with politics. as hardy as delicate, rooted and propagating. my season’s not over so fast as…

Read More