Fog Line
I was onto something—
Pacific Northwest meadow trail,
reddish, dead pine needle carpet.
I was onto something—
I wildfired what made me whole.
Cindersmell.
Cedarbreath.
Rainwaterhairdoo.
I was onto something—
established metrics to keep
the switchbacks honest.
Oblivion is a pile
of hollowed-out trees.
We swallowed fresh sap,
wanting to bend microbes
to our wills, hold their poses.
Attempts at control
are absurd since we’re up
to our eyes in being human.
The core message is: we bleed.
The absence of tragedy
nerfs resourcefulness.
Hopelessness is in the genes
when you speak to your
disheveled brother or mother in
an inpatient mental illness ward.
I was onto something, then
passed through a doorway
and lost whatever it was
in the fog line.
Humpback Mountain
Potholes marked progress
on the forest road. Fog lifted
as we reached the old logging
trail freckled with quartz.
Mushroom foragers furrowed,
their knees buckled near
the railroad spike shriveled
by rust. When was it last used
with intention? The washout
remained belligerent.
Fire-orange and crimson leaves
flat against gray clouds—present,
present, present. The mountaintop
bucks like a humpback whale.
The swarm of hornets
we heard was a cheap
drone, muttering, seeing landscape
but not logging its awe. The mountain
is insightful and searching
for the best way to pronounce
its feelings. Still, cruelty
thickens the air,
and I’m so lost that I find
my way home, down the street
from the funeral parlor
with the neon-green marquee.
Its beauty sees straight through me.
Gothic Basin
I broke down, abandoned
all passions for rubbery jaws
shrugging as mothers
withered faster than
grocery-store roses. Forgot love
affairs with decay. Trek to old
growth forests to nurse
the newest wounds. I’m either
alive or living; or reconstituted.
Ratify the charter or scorch
my eyes, as ouzo flights burn
and numb throaty proclamations.
I meander with wilderness
through the mountain valley, snap
my tongue at the altar
of avalanche debris. An offering
with the potential of thunder.
Past the ridge, a heart
interrupts the pine.
Beg everyone’s pardon, sorrow
for the slug lost under
a boot. I debrief the shivering
lake, grieve our screams as
if to say you can finish these.
Divorce
The flowers wither with suspense,
we start on the right foot.
Tomorrow’s sorrow will be
glamorous if we go together.
Your rank means nothing
to your organelles.
Your rotten kidneys earn
a lifetime achievement award.
A seaplane loops through
the bone white sky.
I pin bronze medals on
baby strollers. The flowers
fail, monochrome thoughts.
Your fear becomes sentient,
it rages with precision.
There is no right way to live.
The flowers reproduce cowardice
and your allergies flare up,
throat swollen with pollen.
Remember your breathing.
Remember to make meaning
out of the eruptions.
Having a high pain threshold,
you auction off your ligaments.
The eruptions melt
the bones of your argument.
No good sir quarrels
when provoked. You take
things case by case,
entombed in your
goose down duvet.
Your organelles have had enough.
Remember to kindly
surrender your stress balls.
Selfishness is this year’s
headliner. Dawn filters
through the drawn blinds.
Whereby I witness his rapid
decline. Wherein delusions
are lunar, I’m a spectator.
Whoever said freezing to death
is one of the better ways to go
must have despised fire.
