Monday, May 2, 2016

- on moving from the Rio Grande to the Willamette

I feel I don’t sometimes
understand
why the wind blows, and
 - I mean I
understand
the why, the how,
but for what purpose, and
even the system as a whole
spanning continents and decades
like the gaze of a colossus
escapes me;
a cottonwood tuft in the air,
those springtime snowflakes.

Yesterday I looked at a
tree whose name I didn’t know
and it loomed vast
 - not in size, but in detail,
sharp as glass daggers in sunlight
and I didn’t
understand,
though I wanted to,
how one could live in such
imperfect contentment, the grace
of only those who never think
to question it: now

among the iron-black and
rust-spackle I
stand under
a sickly-pale blue sky
fighting for space among
high-rises (or am I drowning,
looking down at a celeste ocean?)
and the breeze tastes of
machine-breath, of
tongue-in-tailpipe wet dreams;
I see a wisp of cotton in the air,
twelve hundred miles from home.



          (completed 4/20/16)

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