air clean warm

windows open to the milk moon
breezes bid budding adieu. the
skin of this air is a random grid
of fruit cellars holding upright
their flagpoles in the wind.
a forest of indistinguishable hairs
grasping for paltry light they
sway in delighted unison and
whisper memories of deer spotting
and back seats' windows rolled
fully down for chin and left forearm.
my eyes would close to the pace
quickened while on roads between
picnic bench grounds and open
to quieted air and dissipated
momentum and to the occasional
odocoileus white tail spy i would
speak to silently and grin-tinged.

the north shore

three moons would
at least
rope six tides. these
hours after the february incessance
quit i could still hear
rivers lost to the underground
crashing ceaseless glacial falls. three
north shore beacons brought cold
glow
to the heavy air
that prepared for its morning descent
upon the city
a blanket falling in slow motion. three
beacons perch as kings
asleep atop thrones gilded. bats
and birds come summer
might know them for navigation as
young upwardmoving flock to
their factory powder come winter. three
peaks
soft guards to the crags and bluffs beyond
too tall and windswept for
their roots to ever adorn boots. this 
very wind is what battered
these peaks
open to open water
and to the unpatterned 
torment of ocean. water flows
and blows with the immortal workers
molecules of radon 
breathed and rebreathed by all life
this thin photosynthetic
skin
has ever known.

fallen frozen

"Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night…"


"Self-Reliance," by Ralph Waldo Emerson

10.31.10

maybe never now

the blue range

floats upon the sound

quiet from this vantage

like piles of crumpled leather

strewn and foreshortened

atop a landscape of planer frost

gaps in the hovering cloud cover

soft and lumpy and low

cast a juxtaposition of shards

of angular light

moving patiently across

peak to slope to peak

light highlights that which I forgot

was green and growing as I am

cells self-replicating in silence
in forgotten perpetuity

were the blankets of conifers

losing all original self to time as I have but

still marked recognizable by a code unseen

there is no now now

only the projection of just what was

just witnessed by the narrows of our senses

as the fragments of light continue to move

away from where they registered

in the moment after a moment ago

3000 (4828 km)

in the absence of light
to know hardness just below
riding two wheels is flight soundless to the wind

i tore down off-broadway
as if my day warranted exodus
past homes preparing for rest where
there were a few porch lights accompanied
only by the flickering red and white
of those on the flats

other riders took with me a bold hard line
on the grid and towards the bright glazed tower spires
reflecting twice their stature in the sheltered bay
i knew from a newborn memory was there
a glass shard in an arboreal vastness

i am three thousand miles from home
(perhaps soon just four more blocks)
and the tug pull of old losing ground to
the new has commenced

with sadness the space between
my two homes will never fold

I SAID, YOU ARE GODS

pittsburgh

our city was a rare beautiful that time of year

freezing rain shrouded our ancient hilltops

from view for days but that day

held only a patient cerulean sky

i took the long way that night

after the hue faded so

i might witness the remaining sunset burn

and its crisp cast igniting halos above everything

as if it all bore a presumed magnificence

i would rather call than write you

to let you know how seeing you

would have made my tomorrow perfect

but my absent patience brought me whole

instead across town to zulema street then

just as the sky went urban starless black

people as in new york cop shows

during segues between scenes

were out on their concrete walkups

loitering as if time was no matter and

as if the weather had turned gold for good

as i locked my bicycle to your front stoop and

dialed your framingham number still new to me

wishing the wind

learning cypress mountain

rivers of sand