Good Morning.

Nisqually

This is the water’s chosen courseway
through a slowly changing landscape—
chosen the way we choose roadways,
pathways, lifeways—the only way that works.
We flow where we can, constantly reassessing
turning for boulders, carving cliff faces
roaring, trickling, meandering to the sea.

Mt Rainier

Somewhere there is a road that tunnels through tree forests,
a primordial passage into wilderness.
The grass is greener on that other side
and we follow each other into the blue.
It is difficult to stop until you reach the summit
of all things--with this suction of sky,
a promise of views and a place to
stand on the lid of this world.
How can one come down from such heights
and ever thrive at the edge of the sea
having beheld the thin lightness
of being atop it all.

Notes On The Weather

We are clouded in once again, the snow days of this city.
White wisps find their way over the lip of our front door
and the cracks in the windowsill, creeping into our sleepy
Sunday living room, slow dizzy ghosts.

To live in this city is to live among clouds,
below a friendless blue sky,
where the tops of the buildings reach up to hold onto fog;
to pull it over their faces like covers on a blue grey bed.
An ocean is out there somewhere, we know,
humming its hum, sending in
bottles and cans and painted artifacts,
small notes from a world beyond,
wishing us to wake up and emerge.

But for now, our curtains billow though the window is closed.
We tape them down and climb back in bed—lost in longing
for more of that white
brightness.
Soon we know, we must rise
to turn on all the machines
and continue clawing at the world.