Something in a bottle

 

In my dream, a small, clear, glass bottle filled with something like bird shot - metallic beads -

or maybe sugar sprinkles. But colored like Kaw river water. Then one and then another began to sparkle like ripples on a wind driven river, catching sunlight and it seemed to me like the flashing lights were trying to tell me something.

Sleep, I am told, is when your mind clears out clutter, but jangles and clatter dangle like an

unbarbed hook into waters that first fall from the sky in drips and drabs, dribbling finally in droplets from my dreams.

I awoke more embellished than ever. The cat purred loudly in distraction and my pen seemed to make no more sense than a kite, higher the river flows after the rain falls, brighter the night glows under clouds flooding so low.

Yesterday, I ground cumin seeds and filled two small, clear, glass bottles. I labeled them both but you could smell strongly the spice with the lids off. Cumin grinds the color of cumin.

If there is a point to my dreaming, was it lost in the waking, or did the hunching up of empty phrases leave residues of sense where I hadn’t planned to hide any?

In the water of one moment on a day long ago I made one woman look up the meaning of word because of a poem I made out of simple light splashings. A glance or clear, glass chance, perchance?

It is not truth or even beauty I pursue by abandoning the closing and opening of eyes, or rather peering wildly or blindly.

It is someone to see what I saw and better for you to wonder about what I never saw and for us to see something I mislabeled. And over dinner or distance, we will hold up a glass and then recount the miracle that neither of us knows.

When you look in my eyes are you ever surprised by who you see and when you look at a bottle the color of wine glass, do you see the dapples of starlight?

A candle will do in the evening, crystal or glass will suffice. Look in my eyes and smell the water, mud is turning to light.

See Heraclitus

I like the idea of an everyday poem.

A shadow of a rod pointed toward the pole star

crossing a half-buried blue plate

in the soft garden soil

at about ten o’clock.

Not a moment to write home about –

Oh look! There’ a house finch on the wire –

and what do you know about that?

I’m already here.

I think I’ll break for an early lunch.

A cat nap.

And then maybe I won’t write

anything monumental on my walk today.

I thought that maybe I should mention

that it’s Wednesday.

And now that I have, it seems

even too mundane for a capital letter.

But if anyone should read this,

why would they care if I get

afternoon sunshine in my eyes

or that it’s all merely

water under the bridge?

Really, it’s not like this everyday.

Sometimes, I only write words

and sometimes it’s little

more or less than nonsense.

I try to have supper with someone

I love at six.

Almost everyday.

From the far bank

When the sun is going down,

a fringe of bare branches still reach up

between the horizon

and the deep-shadowed earth,

trunks mooring down to the water line,

flaunting face stares into my eyes

if I drop my outstretched hand,

raised, not in salute - but well I might.

The river’s ripples

reflect the persuasive blazing,

waves scattering light shards in all directions,

mostly downstream, the band of dazzle

drifts toward the bridge

and yet still holds in place.

The watery way looks bearable,

not to my feet, but softer to my eyes.

Yet the wet rivulets and the sprightly wavelets of lights,

like tiny boats bobbing, are driven

not by current or oar, but by the west wind.

Outlying coracles wink under the span

of liquid sunlight and head back out into the blue.

Bare branches

This winter I have not been discontent. I have not been impatient with bare branches. I am now eager for spring, leaning with the earth into the sun. But this year I have looked more often with some care through bare branches. I have missed less what I could not see and sometimes have noticed I could see farther along certain sight-lines. Green-fringed horizons cannot come too soon, but gray-fringed skies will be missed. To see farther I shall merely have to go out into the open.  I shall look up.

Tonight, most of the sky was hazy. Sky time - the two stars of the dipper overhead hardly visible pointing down to the pole star- was midnight when I checked. Bare branches around me black against a brighter sky. Often at dusk I have walked through South Park. Easily, the nearer bare branches  passed before the farther ones. My video is jerky, even though I took some care. The passing  seemed so smooth to my walking eyes. Tricks of the mind.

I am ready for green leaves by day and black leaves by night to hide what has not been hidden to my open winter eyes. The sun will still reflect off the white limestone of the courthouse. The fountain will burble again. The shadows will change on the ground. Some reds will seem redder.

The equinox approaches. Good bye bare branches, for this season passes without my effort and little lasting regret. I have not been discontent with this winter. It could, perhaps, have snowed more. It did get biting cold, but not too often for my bundled body. And the sun was low in my eyes, often enough. And shining through bare branches.

And the moon is full every twenty eight days. I have never bothered to count to be sure. And the sun will soon have to climb higher in the morning before I can see it directly. I can live with that.

Still photos March 9, 2015

Trying to remember

The warmth seeped out of my winter coat.

The coffee shop was steps behind me.

The sidewalk was concrete.

This is the dead of winter. I extracted those words from my back pocket,

my mind sifting and sorting.

The park came into view as I lifted my eyes.

Brown leaves lay on the grass. When had they fallen?

Sycamores, their branches bare, scraped at the sky,

finger bones without nails, cars might be coffins.

If the street were a river, the sound would be alive.

But tires on asphalt, synthetic, false, but so expected as to be

unnoticed. I tuned it out.

My head tilted back on my neck,

the sky overhead was clear,

the blue fading in honor of dusk.

But a wave approached across the sky from the south in the slowest of motion,

a line – no, that word won’t do.

An edge, a froth, like the ocean after a long journey,

spending it’s last dime on an atmospheric beach.

Gray foam, thinning blue sometimes shining through,

the color of the setting sun tinting the undersides.

They say it’s colder up there. I should look it up.

Perhaps the wave is receding, how would I know?

I have stood on a beach as salt foam touches my bare feet

and returns. I cannot stand up there.

But it’s not like that. My words are not false, but they do not

tell the truth.

The branches are bare, the cold seeps into my coat.

The sidewalk has turned to brick. The earth should be solid,

but no bricklayer would have laid these red bricks so unevenly. And the red color

that I call the bricks does not call to mind the red wool cap on her yellow head

or the blue, also in her cap - blocks back - does not match the sky.

I am taking nearly the shortest line between two points, I am walking on edge here below,

steadily pacing out the seconds.

And in less time than it takes to find the words, a jet has dived into a cloud bank.

Oh, that is not it. Not it at all.

The jet streaked. The streak that I saw was a tail on fire from the sun,

or rather the streaming line of fossil condensation on a straight edge,

a sun-colored crayon marking the past.

The glint of metal has disappeared into an angled wave of cloud, heading for the sun.

But it would surely bend, arc around, come down somewhere. Everything up must come down.

But the streak of light showed again briefly above the not whispering waves of ice crystals,

and behind, the straight line turned wavering and vanished into thin air.

Who makes up this stuff, anyway?

How can anyone breathe in the dead of winter?

I turned at the corner. The sky was a dusky rose-blue and if I had stood there it would have darkened. The thin bony fingers of a distant wave of a thousand branches on the far side of the far street from where headlamps lighted the way down a straight street advancing up - or taillights last gleaming receding under the clear sky. Everything must come down.

The same and different. Lines in a book, paged through too quickly.

I turned again.  And again.

I unlocked my front door and took off my coat.

I turned on the flame and stared as the steam rose upwards from a pot of boiling water.

The spaghetti was straight so long as I held it in my hand.

I think I must have left my scarf at the coffee shop.