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In my dream a few nights back, there was a great bison that came upon me. Aggressive, but not with intent to impale. He had a firmness in his eyes as to tell me he might if I moved too quick, if I did not ease his qualm with my palm on his head, he might ruin the whole room. I was briefly scared, but the eyes of this great animal showed the same fear and at once I guided myself away and let him be. Let him find solace in the corner of the dark room. You were that great beast, I realized as I awoke. The eyes and the bruteness of his head. The caress and the love I deeply wanted to give, the desire to be chosen in the rash moment of fear. All this reminded me of you, yes, but the sway of his walk. His gentleness and his grandness, all these were you.

On the dam that held back as much water as I felt this fall, you and I walked. It was long and full of cranky indian fishermen and their fisherboys. You were foreign to me then, like a fading photo I wouldn’t take out of the frame on the wall where the sun rises each morning. You knew it too, I could see in your eyes. They looked off down the corridor of the dam and along the water seeking something you weren’t going to find. They were looking far off and were cloudy, all at once.

I hope you are on the prairie now, grazing and taking time. You never should have come into that room, dear Bison, you did not belong there. Your eyes fouled with stage lights and the blackness of the corner you hid in and confused at all the noise. Dear Bison I hope you run toward the storm and arrive on the other side, sunset pulling towards a horizon that tells of the ocean. I hope your eyes are clear and hopeful.

To sleep in the warmth of your fur, dear Bison, like the pelt on your family couch. There is no where to sleep so surely now. I will rarely think of you, as one rarely thinks of the emptiness of the great plain until they are confronted with the winter white expanse under a cerulean sky and brought to an emotional impasse. In these moments I will miss you like I miss all the Bison, and it will bring me to tears. A broken, heaving, God-begging sob.

The plain remains empty, the clouds pass over.

welcome

did you expect nothing? I guess I did, must have been the realist in me

The night is late and the tree is still up.

I look toward its frightening lights (lightning? lightening?) and would like to cry

or fill the whole house with smoke so much

i can’t sing or think.

It is like dancing

it is always like dancing

that’s all we ever do is dance and think about the space our clothing makes

and even the tiny space the air makes

between us no matter how close we sway

girls love to dance.

One day I shall find a husband who dances

and won’t let me rest my feet

till all know I am only his to dance with

until then the bar is a place i sit and

look out the frost windows

at the speckled lights and the others walking home with something

i don’t know about.

The floor will be filled and I will dance here

and there, new for me

and think of that space, that dead space

where you and I can only exist

between spins and twists

the dead space in winter

and the streets are filled with snow, everything like a game

and I laugh empty in my car to no one

sometimes my dog

and wonder at my lonesome, mourning the moments I do not

think of God and wonder of your face

trying to forget it like it was never supposed to make sense and all this

was a dream, fumbled by the reality of daylight.

I’ve listened to more music this month than all year.

One day I will not be here glaring and weeping to the most beautiful tree I have seen

from another room and I will be dancing

not remembering, just spinning, caught up

in the closeness of a love who can hold a flower

even in winter, dead petals and all

Today I took 2 baths.

One, a brining of sorts, soaking up the marinade.

The next, a proper cleansing.

To all the woeful women who have come before, how do you make due?

Empty house with candles lit for only God, right?

Odd turning face to an old life.

I see her across the river, jumping and running.

The sun is on her face. She is crying and I am her there.

It is warm and bright so much so it hurts.

Shadows gross and dark hover in the corners.

I am reminded again this day is near done.

Across the river a woman in deep blue watches me like a mother.

I want to hold her, or run straight to her arms.

The land is in chaos there across the river. 

A deep pool of sunlight cuts the cracked road ahead of her,

Begs her to run forward.

I have seen her move, but her stride is slow.

It is as if, for a moment, someone ahead calls her name, her attention flutters.

Then her gaze again steadies on me.

One day we will meet in the river, the two of us.

the temperature stands 48 degrees and the fields are a muddy yellow. portions of sunlight filter through the cloud body. milk-like, the sky is backlit all the way across. snow is only in the mountains.

a young woman sits reclined in the bathtub. she scans around and shifts frequently. her body is mostly submerged. ovulation will occur soon. earlier in the day, she went off to the river and plunked in as a celebration. the beach was filled with spry footsteps and spins. the bath water is tepid. she closes her eyes for some time.

on her forearm the skin is risen with yellowing scabs. she lifts it, a soggy white wet mush. the wound is a decent and shallow gash across the part of a wrist that might rest on a writing desk. she looks at it and grazes it, her eyes unchanging.

quickly, half of the water drains. the woman twists the left-most tap and an outpour steams from the faucet . her feet hover close to where the waters meet. the room is quiet and still except for this. outside the open window, birds twiddle to one another frequently. it is december.

i miss you so much

telling the most mundane of mundane and you’d agree

it’s mundane

kisses, soft and unexciting

like a good sleep

i look at the stars and wish i thought of you more

i am ill in my loneliness

more myself and less honest

I have been running as the tide rises

rises

rises up and i shut my eyes

surely to help

i miss you

like death, the only thing I can compare it to

like a giant hole that will be a hole

until my inner earth erodes

and it is a soft slope, shallower and shallower

after many years the flowers will spring brightly

it is like death to miss you and I do not know what to do with that

you see we both must go on living

in all this death we must keep living

you, in the sun, with salty curls

very far away from me

Hello
I am reaching you half way across the world
Your feet in the sand and hot I imagine
What you are thinking
What you are drinking
And if we are never in a car cruising down the highway in the late sun again
Forever you will hold me safely

I forget to remember you
Already a ghost whose space my job is only to fill up, not mourn
Dust into place again
Now I know so very little it is incredible I cannot for the life of me
Reckon a solid point of ground
To leap again from, I am floating
Adrift, rolling over the crest of each wave and into the low parts again
I move dresses and coats into the empty zone of the closet
I cannot remember you like I cannot remember my own face
Even when I look in a mirror

The beach looks warm
A kind place to mourn
Beside you I would sit and miss the growing idea of everything I’d ever made up ahead of me
Wide and flat is the ocean
What has happened here with half the world between us
It is like looking at the sun 

And still, we’d sit there silently

It is the beginning of the cold months, darker and greyer each night. A frothy cloud bank settles over the town like a blanket, blocking stars and keeping all the noise in. Lights of downtown, small as it is, bounce off the milky ceiling. Bars are filled with chatter dropping in sense by the hour. Occasional street walkers waltz out and sing, cough, and make their way to bed. There is a palpable desperation in the air, as does happen this time of year.

Down across town at the river, each sound is amplified. It is late, past midnight, with few souls out. The warble of geese sound like boozed up, grousing women. The highway above the river valley screeches and mellows, screeches and mellows, only met by the ever-present train blare. All these noises are of a comforting sort. Not to the soul, as a bird song or the trickle of water might be, but to he bustling mind of a sleepless walkers. Surely the train conductors or the backseat passengers in the transit cars are amuck in their own worries, staring out across the grey expanse. It is an odd time of year to be alive.

And maybe it is that word, “alive,” that does not fit. That must be where the confusion starts. It doesn’t capture what is really being lived out there. It indicates a pace and presence, but at this time of year each soul is in scramble for one reason or another.

The fishermen are hasty to get their last days of sunset catching in before the ice hoards consume. The barkeep counts down the minutes, shrugging off pestilent advances from the shrinking, souring crowd. The children are anxious to complete their dues and taste their impending days of rest. The seamstress in her home struggles to pick one more seam, hoping the sun won’t rise tomorrow and she can finally shut her eyes. The dogs become more demanding at any notice of their masters by the door. They know the winds are cold, and soon they’ll become resident to a spot by the fire and spend the rest of the season asleep.

Despite their haste and angst it is in idleness they dwell, all the souls waiting to sleep. Somehow the shortening days grow longer and slower. The minutes tread on nearly painful. Many seek refuge in the God they’ve neglected or did not think to thank in the summer sun. Some waste off, rotting themselves with vapid entertainment. The lovers once sure and sightly let go of their handholds and stare off towards separate horizons. They wonder what is to come in spring. The crops all harvested and canned, the kitchens in lull. All the leaves are trodden down.

In the morning the sky is white again, as if only to tell of another muffled evening. The sleepers and the sleepless stir slowly and rise to walk the dogs. The children stay inside. The wind moves solely through the streets. It is the beginning of the cold months where no one alive still lives.

There is a war outside the glass. She cannot see it, but she can hear it. Subtly blaring horns and rifle shots, then silence for too long of awhile.

She continues in the kitchen with her soup. The bones of last weeks chicken and this weeks chicken all warm well and fill the house. It softens the atmosphere. This is her second batch. The dog will get the bones after this.

The sky has been laden with mist and clouds, letting out swift heaves of rain every few hours. She is like the rain, her eyes. Not predictable when they will pour, but guaranteed.

Was the war raging one month ago? Hard to remember now. Sun polluted the skies so much so that any fighting must have been outshined. And the trees were turning, of course! Everyone must have been distracted as she had been.

There is much work in the home to do. Paint is chipping, seals are leaking in the heavy downpour, and even inside the house she can feel the wind. It is the type of world where turning on the light too early feels like an offense.

She has a man well-fed each morning and sends him off. Far away he goes, works, avoids gunshots, and returns. Each evening they fall into a similar, quiet routine. Hardly ever do they talk of the war.

What is the use, they both must figure? Will the war stop, or swallow them whole if they mention it? It is so much bigger than the both of them, like an impassable mountain.

Years back, in the buds of their love the two hiked a lot. Even then, talks of war echoed along the canyon walls and carried in the clouds over them, but never tread much further. The hiking and climbing led them to lakes, thousands of feet high. Both would swim and shiver, and lay themselves out without words. Nothing could reach them there.

The war was right outside, humming at the edge of the stoop. She never saw blood, never heard screams. War is nothing like they taught of it, she thought to herself. He should be back soon. What then?

Another day, another day, and he would still have to go out and fight eventually. She would resign herself to an empty kitchen albeit the chicken broth and have more time she doesn’t really need.

She wants him to go, to get all this over with. He is right though, surely if he had joined any earlier he would have been killed. Maybe now is the right time. After all the war must end sometime and soon is sooner now than back then.

They talk of it, as if they hadn’t noticed the blares and shots before, at dinner in the evening. Soup. It all comes out like vomit, necessary and uncomfortable, relieving while skinning the edge of death.

She worried she was pushing him into something, maybe it was best to stay idle and continue brushing it along. He too felt this for some time, but now his expression changed. He faced the window as a man called to action might. She watched his hard eyes, already mourning them.

All at once she was relieved, warmer to him, and heartbroken. What was to come of them and all this? In the previous months, her prayers changed for both of their successes, opposed to their sustainment. Maybe God brought the war to the window.

The kitchen, after he left, was terribly cold and empty. The dog slept in a different room than usual, sensing the conflict. Would he return that evening? Would she have cooked for two? Every second hung over her like a heavy eyelid.

Love is a brutal thing. Years back, the man dreamed of going off to war and leaving her on the shore. As he drifted, waving toward her, he watched as she lowered her arms solemnly and sat on the beach. He turned and looked at the sea ahead.

On his way out the door that morning, the woman kissed the man and he held her tightly like they had when they first met. All sounds and fear froze for one second. She let go and they looked at each other gravely, then softly.

He kissed her one more time and left. Sun broke through the grey sky in tiny patches. The streets were quiet.

It is the leaves I speak of

turning and plummeting through the air

like they’ve forgotten how good they had it

up until now, a sweet view,

comfortable and familiar, so fair

one could lose themselves in the soft

chattering, windy white noise

.

But some fond memory prickles

incessantly, each moment in each day

of being spritely and green

wrapped in all the joy and fear of youth

the longing of late evenings

Where is the excitement?

it is better to get on with it

rush headfirst into the inevitable

.

Do the leaves remember

when they emerged from this ground

a small sprout

much different than today

Return!

like a child clinging to their mother

though 10 years have passed

.

what if, what if!

Let’s go back and resurrect

keep the changes we have made

start fresh like not one day has passed

.

the bloody blessing about change

is all that’s missed once you notice it

.

This homecoming season

a muddy homage

leading each leaf downwards

in a spiral towards death

Pessimistic? This was bound to happen

falling

in and out of love

with a life cultivated kind and patient

The tree is barren now, lonely as I look up

and before all this madness,

the most beautiful rich red only like the sun

In memory I feel its heat

brief and gone

.

Why couldn’t they stay put,

before I got to really look at them

and before I got to really love them

.

It is the leaves I write of,

certainly the leaves

I’d like to write profoundly as such that I read. It draws on the lonesome parts of life, the silence before sleep or between bites of a meal. To capture the long pause I must take before closing a book entirely and returning to life, and for a split moment wonder if it has all been wrong and perhaps it is time to wade off. As the long and thin woman described in ink, so beautiful that she gives ill-tailored clothing a place, I can think of her though I cannot see her, no face comes to mind. Or the color white written as summer in winter – it is the sheer brightness I cannot imagine. All this to say, there is little to add.

I eat in the yard silently, rarely. Upwards in the sky I watch a single sea bird pass, far off, its wings flying heavy. It cruises high over the gold cross atop the church, then below soft, vanishing pink clouds. He has gone from the sole moving spot in the evening sky to a yearning fowl making haste as the day draws in. Within each flap I see his angst, an undying urge not to settle here or there

You are far from home, sea bird. This is all I can think of.