Specks of Wonder Poetry Blog

In The Last Gusts

2010-04-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't done anything in the past
four days,
except exist.

Sure, I've drifted
over the railroad tracks like a tuft
on the breezes.

Sure I've climbed to the top of the abandoned
trains, with their rust rubbing off.

Nothing can be done
in the final currents of Spring,
except let the breezes take you,
I've concluded.

Nothing can be done while
the Summer bulges about to burst, pulling
everything up into its pause.

As we float towards
that breathless state, Summer.

The lion let loose, lazily
being a lion.

The dandelions set loose,
knowing exactly what to do
on their currents of Spring.

Following the suggestions of the wind and
its invisible mumblings.

I've done nothing in the past four days
except watch the dandelions
prepare for summer.

I've done nothing
except wear the rust of giant trains
standing on their backs in the last gusts

before the lion walks.

Fondest Memory

2010-04-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

The girl was young and full of synthetic sugars.

She walked by pale in the Spring day sun
after a long night of sitting on gravestones.

Meeting her friends with black eyeliner
in the depths of the public park
after the streetlamps went dark.

Each with a sad compulsion.
Each with a cloud companion of loneliness.

Their little clouds hovering above them as they moved
about the town.

We could see them drifting like bruises by the creek,
smoking cigarettes together in their private storms,
drizzling onto the water's edge, onto stones...

Or over in the plaza
under the town's statue of heroism.

The tall soldier looking resolute into the past symbolizing nothing.

Nothing but the town, just a place
where rain clouds gather.

And a few memories about sadness.

When rain washed mascara down cheeks
and the waters rose.

When the creek in the night wouldn't stop
and rose and kept on rising.

And so many little twigs were set loose from branches.
And so many twigs were set spinning over black currents.

This was the closest to home they felt
when the Earth was lost.

This was their fondest memory of how they lost.

Frozen Blossoms

2010-04-18T11:54:00.000-07:00

we thought it was the end

we thought that the white skies

were in the past, but we think this

every year when April comes, like fools

we think this, marching on into the warm days

as if we found new life, as if we found

an opening, oblivious

of what's next, oblivious of what's waiting

like a frozen mountain range at the edge

of the week, that we will all have to climb,

that comes every year, this week

of the April fools telling each other

that before we know it, warm nights

will be here too, telling each other that the warm days

are here to stay, this week of walking through the park

in our short sleeves, our summer attitudes

donned, falling on the park grasses, lying still in

the park grasses in the tree patterns, watching

the ducks be ducks without a care, the reflections

in the ponds as their own purpose...

The great nonchalance of Summer descending, until we wake

to the last wisp of Winter reaching

into Spring, and our winter coats, our gray

clouds, our curses, are pulled from closets,

our wool bodies dark against the white fields,

our Summer temperaments dropping

with the frozen blossoms.

Out the Back Entrances

2010-02-28T17:42:00.000-08:00

we ask ourselves

why we do the same thing

over and over

and we ask ourselves

why we are addicted

in these ways

these mysterious substances, the forms

that are less mysterious

every time we have them

for one or two days

or, for about a week

and then, gathering that glow

we see them glowing

on sidewalks

as they were

we see them glowing in the windows

while we window shop

they could be that women

who wraps herself up

with the long scarves,

who wraps herself up

like a sacred package

or they could be those bottles

lined up in the neat files

of the liquor store

with colors burning

ready to catch our spirits…

and then, it happens, like it did

the last time, we give in…

and it’s the inevitable walk of disgust

as we walk around as a guilty wilted thing

as we walk around like a droopy flower, a weed

and there is no escaping

what we are

when what we are

is what we did

and what we did

lives on inside us

as a sickness

but then, storm fronts drift in

and we see them

as unexpectedly as the last time

as they come unannounced

from somewhere over the mountains

the sky changes, churning over itself, arms coiling,

dark swirls swirling, with shades of gray on gray and the trees

nodding on and on in the peripheries

and on and on they nod as the wind sweeps

across the hours and the valley,

sweeping up everything superfluous

the memories of the lives we led

the guilt of doing what we shouldn’t have

in the corners of those long evenings

when we lost ourselves

out the back entrances

all going dim

2010-01-17T10:21:00.001-08:00

we see buildings with blank expressions
looking down on main street
we see the mountains in their panes
as reflections,
the windowpanes

and people go in and out all day from the icy city light
to the dimness, then back out into the icy light…

and the buildings are still
staring in their expressions and their bodies
are stiff and the mountains
are still sprawling as they always do with their angles
and cloud storms racing over the stillness
in the distance, turning and tumbling over
the icy blue sheets…

we see it all in the building panes
while the buildings stare blankly down
on main street

holding the peaks in their glasses
and the movements of the cloud storms
in their glasses, the spectacles
showing us what’s
behind our shoulders, the distances
and our movements as we walk
down icy sidewalks, the spectacles
again and again
using the stillness to move
flowing over the icy streets…

there is a lot of talk
over coffee and tea
and it washes over the interiors
of so many rooms

with voices tumbling over voices
jumbling together against walls
and rolling and tumbling over tables and
onto floors, through the cracks
and out through the open doors
with the heat into the cold
wind from the mountains…

it all goes, but then it doesn’t
because they are not the same walls
not the same floors or ceilings or bricks, the bricks
having something else added

as we said what we said
that one time, when we said it
and moved how we moved when
we moved to the doors,
opening and closing
the doors, to the outside
how we moved
and how we saw…

the faces of the buildings staring out
the faces of the people looking about
for what is out to see in, looking
for something unknown but looking
always going in to retire…

eventually to the buildings,
their interiors, sometimes looking out
through the windows against
the windowpanes, faces and hands
pressed against the glass, but then
going back in to sleep
the panes going black
in buildings within buildings
falling to sleep, going through doors
back to sleep
to other neighborhoods in sleep…

as the outside turns in and dims out
and the compartments grow dim
and the mountains are growing dim
no longer reflections in the glass,
no longer spectacles
the people growing dim

leaving main street,
the buildings staring
in their absence

then there’s nothing left to be said
and no one left to be seen

as the snow falls
blanketing the sidewalks
covering the streets while we sleep
and tumble in our dreams, in our white sheets
our dream spectacles

winter song

2009-12-16T09:27:00.001-08:00

there is a low howling here

that comes from the sun.

listen to the wind chimes

and how they’re possessed.

their hollow tones ringing through the neighborhoods

about something invisible.

look at how the trees bend and sway

as if under water

waiving in slow motion

at something invisible.

this valley is unified

by the thick red light

that paints the grasses and the cliff faces

that paints the Indian blood, the red earth.

things are stained and there’s a song about it

droning on in the background

behind the movements of our machines

and the movements of the wind splitters

the people walking over sidewalks to their lives.

we think there’s something more than walking

with the song and seeing the trees dance

but there’s not.

we think there’s something more we’ve got to do

other than feel the valley’s breath

that comes down from the red cliffs

to the winter grasses

but there’s not.

The Impossible Future

2009-04-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

There was a series of unfortunate events
and the world passed us by in a flurry.

Before we knew it, we looked around
and didn’t recognize a thing.

We see trees and buildings and fenced yards
with cats slinking through them.

We see lonely houses with elongated towers
and crows waiting in the trees nearby.

We see rows of little birds on telephone wires
and the sun glowing red behind their black figures
and the neighborhoods growing dim.

The dark rising from where dark rises from
with the sun sinking in.

We slink through the shadows in a world
going to shadow, and don’t know how we got here.

These are the neighborhoods that turn
with the deepening dusk in a foreign language.

As we slip by invisibly because we’re not
from around here and never will be
from around here even though we live
down the street.

The town has a consciousness
that we cannot penetrate, as we slide
past the fences, the yards and the gargoyles,
the cats hurrying from bush to bush,
and the crows eying driveways.

This is all part of a story not meant for us.

This is our impossible future.

Passing Through

2009-03-15T18:17:00.001-07:00

I do know that I was sitting alone.

There was a distinct feeling
that I was waiting for a bus.

I wasn’t really waiting
for a bus, but for death,
or for my eternal life
which was all around me.

I didn’t know if I’d
ever write again,
or who I’d be without
my writing.

Death comes as a feeling of passing through,
when we see that we’re not
from around here.

We are always passing through.

We are always not
from around here.

I am a solitary bird, I forgot
to tell you.

Watching the newspapers flap against the buildings
and then fall still.

Listening to the newspapers rustle between fingers
and the background music.

I forgot to tell you
I’m not lonely
even though I spend
my mornings in silence.

I forgot to tell you
I’ll never be lonely again.

Because I found where I belong
where everything’s moving
and I’m still, or
where I’m moving
and everything’s still,
or where we’re all moving or still
together, with only the bus
to think about
that never comes,
only the feeling of it coming comes,
only the feeling of an eminent departure
of never arriving
flapping around like the newspapers
and watching ourselves.

Sometimes it’s obvious,
that we’re all ghosts.

Our bodies phantoms
in the café light
while the gray day grows
outside despite.

Drinking our phantom coffees, with our
phantom voices echoing.

We’ve been a lot of places
and have forgotten most of them.

We’ve been a lot of people
and have forgotten most of them.

Even though they’re as close to us
as our breath, as familiar as our warmth that glows.

This will all crumble someday
and we’ll be somewhere else,
having passed through,
waiting for a bus somewhere else.

Another bus stop full of ghosts
sitting with our steaming coffees
and our gourmet treats, and our breath
vanishing just like before,
but with a few different thoughts.

I forgot to tell you,
I like my aloneness
in the company of everything
that’s passing through, just
as I am.

I forgot to tell you
that I’m at the bus station
but I’m not leaving.

Someday, I’ll scribble
a few sentences that will last,
and then even those will perish.

Walk with me later
after I’ve been alone,
and we’ll watch the day pass
and we’ll rustle the papers
between our fingers
like a couple of ghosts
who don’t know they’re ghosts.

Until the Ice Melts

2009-02-10T17:41:00.000-08:00

Snow falls, and the town is dressed up
in its new thoughts.

All of the upward surfaces
are dusted with evidence.

Everyone knows something fell last night,
that there was a communion between
the heavens and the streets.

The rooftops looking up with a brightness.
The mountains having put on their white robes.

“The angels have visited!”
“The day has been made holy!”

Are the thoughts we almost think,
feeling them as a silent celebration
when we get our coffee, or look out
to see the white crowns.

Our cars and trucks transformed into chariots.

Our houses into temples, our neighborhoods,
part of a kingdom.

For a few hours we are royalty,
until the ice melts.

The Giant Eye

2009-01-29T12:43:00.001-08:00

There is something suspicious
about the cloud formations here.

We find ourselves glancing up.

The way their tentacles creep over the mountains.
Groping over the dark forests
like giant blind insects
who are always searching the Earth.

Or how they can suddenly open up
as endless terrains.

As if, for a few hours,
there’s a great kingdom,
and the sun participates.

Setting off the golden columns,
painting the arches and illuminating
the temples.

But mostly, it’s the constant promise
that at any moment
they’ll reveal
a great mystery
that was always there
like an alien ship
or a giant eye.

Headlines in the Background

2009-01-29T12:38:00.001-08:00

The headlines read:
“BLOOD EVERYWHERE!”
and I continued walking.

The day went on as it should.
Cars seemed not to notice.
None of us saw an ounce of blood.

Except, there was something in the background.

It was a day heavy with dreams
from the night before
that we couldn’t quite remember.

None of the details could be remembered.
I didn’t stop to read the story,
and continued to walk around
with all the blood in the background.

Blood everywhere—on the walls of buildings,
arms and legs, cement, smeared and darkening.

The fog was there, when I woke up.
Covering the mountains, hovering
just above the town.

It was a scene after a tragedy
that we knew took place
but didn’t quite know what.

“NATURE HAS BEEN VIOLATED!”
might have well have been
the headlines for that day.

But we continued walking
trying to figure out
things for ourselves.

Trying to push forward
into a clean future
but seeing only blood.

Two Red Balloons

2009-01-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

We close our eyes
in order to close
and open ourselves.

The slightest rustling,
a child’s voice,
the river over its stones.

These are the sounds of things
busy being themselves.

Our bodies becoming the pastures and the winds
sprawled out across the grass.

A couple of lazy dogs
that don’t know any better
cradled in the slightest sound,
the sky’s breath.

Even the dark thoughts
we don’t push back
knowing it’s as useless
as pushing back the clouds,
the storm front.

Tomorrow ice will descend again
and the warm winds will have visited
for only a single day.

We were two red balloons
set loose on the warm currents
over the green meadows.

We were a couple of kites turning circles
over the tiny town,
that sun patch.

Backdrop of the Fled

2009-01-10T15:36:00.000-08:00

It’s Colorado, it’s winter.
The trees have been deserted.
Standing as statues to their former selves.
Their spirits having been sucked back to the caverns
of introversion, down into the earth, hovering
around the roots and their fungi. Or having fluttered off
with the migrating birds, only to return when life returns,
when the flowers stretch, and the leaves burst, but until then…
The houses will be lined up as they are in single file, on either side
of the wide streets—rows of empty skulls, as spiritless
as the trees, this town,
with only the appearance of life, cars moving like zombies
in caravans, then groaning to nothing in the distance,
a man’s silhouette, crossing down the road,
in the corners of our eyes, from the grocery store, a shadow passing
over asphalt. There is a desolation
in how it all adds up, something emptier than a wasteland, the people
in their living rooms half asleep in TV patterns, having fluttered off
into fantasies of the past, regret configurations, families having failed,
the once passionate having failed to live, the houses: monuments to lives
not lived, to lives living on in imaginations…Walk down these streets
where the crows perch in empty branches, and then fly off…Walk down
these streets, where there’s a great hollowness that floods the plain and
all of the street lamps and the city building façades and the ambulances
and the grocery store clerks, their shadowy prospects, a hollowness
drowning everything that we can’t speak, that everything speaks,
so we take solace in each other when we can, playing ping pong
in the basement at midnight, hoping for a moment that feels right,
to remember, against the backdrop of the fled, its endless winter.

Summer in Exile

2008-06-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

There is a sound
that’s as old as the oldest stream
rushing from the black forest
at the beginning of time.

A sound that wanders with you
when you drive across the country
with the top down.

When you wander
from one place to the next
as a drifter.

With no home except
for what echoes in your ears in the wind.

The drone of the tires on cement
and how the light flickers
through the trees of the roadsides in their haste.

Another town that speeds by in immobility.
Stopping when you decide to stop
lying on your back on a made motel room bed.

With the summer thick outside
and the crickets restless
in endless yellow fields extending out.

It is the sound of their restlessness
and the yellowness of the fields
painted on the walls of your dark mind.

The farmlands sprawled out absent mindedly in the heat
under the pale blue blankness of summer sky.

And the air conditioning pumps and the street noise
and the TV mumbling about the weather in the next room.

It is the sound of yourself in a foreign place
as a stranger to all landscapes
in all of their vague familiarity.

An anonymous walk through a dried up town,
an endless journey, the hum of the planet
and your body in a wilderness of street lamp.

This is the sound of summer, of the day itself,
of you in it.

Under The Overpass

2008-03-30T14:54:00.001-07:00

The day has its own song
that drones inaudibly
in the background.

The mountains sleeping in their black forests
and the birds watching the valley
from undefined perches in the distance.

The drone of the suburbs below
sprawled out in their snake cul-de-sacs
with the people hidden in identical houses
doing undefined things
in our imaginations.

The sound of the small city
moving lazily under slow cloud drifts
always casting undefined shapes
over everything.

The day moves to its own music
—the sound of an animal sleeping
tossing in its own dream.

There is a silence
behind the noise of the mundane
that has its own sound
that can be heard
only once the silence is heard.

The sound of the planet turning through space.

A wildflower,
blooming under an overpass.

Grey on Grey

2008-03-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

We try not to talk about the weather
but then it slips out.

Is there something being said, we wonder
as the huge clouds vanish the mountainsides
then move on.

As the arms of mist coil around dark trees
then rise to their disappearance.

All of these mysteries kept under the canopy
of simple phrases.

Brisk utterances of “It’s cold out.”
Sparse sentences about the likelihood of rain.

We move about the town with our umbrellas poised.
Cloud shadows following us through parking lots.
Mountains slipping into general mists.

The grey is coming and we head indoors
to watch it take over from behind windows.

As the spaces between clouds are covered up by more clouds
and the world outside drifts into a uniformity
of grey on grey.

We watch the outside with something warm
cupped in our hands and the steam
rising over our faces.

The trees swaying slightly from their parking lot holes.
The black umbrellas finally in bloom.

Plausibility of Downpour

2008-02-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

Just when we think
we’ve finished with the rain.

Just when we think
the rain has finished with us.

We’ll look outside and the world
will be glistening.

Wet falling on wet
tires plunging
through roads turned to mirror.

Just as we’re about to believe it,
in the plausibility of sudden downpour,
that so much can cascade
unilluminated by our eyes
when we’re looking somewhere else
into the depths of our coffees
(dry becoming wet while we’re shrugging
in our memories),
it is gone.

The storm has rushed off
and we’re still sitting with ourselves.

It is gone, and we’ve been changed without permission.
The feeling of the day altered without consent.

As if some invisible hand had reached
inside of us and fiddled
with our knobs
on the prompting
of some unintelligible whimsy.

We’re suspicious
and it’s raining in our memories.

We carry around showers
even after the skies have cleared.

Birds of Paradise

2008-02-10T19:57:00.000-08:00

She wore her hair uptight
when arranging her face
for the day
and all of the lookers.

She could be a sex pistol
if she wanted to
but said she wouldn’t stoop.

Without admitting to how slightly
she opened her blouse
so that her curvatures
led somewhere
in the imagination
like the curvatures of the Earth .

She went to church and crossed her heart
with head bowed
giving something back
that was heavy and unlocatable
to something light and unlocatable.

The days waned and then burst
into showers of petals
all different colors of petals.

The trees lining the avenues in white.
The yellow flowers on the dune banks playing
in the seaside breezes.
The birds of paradise
stiff and pointed in orange flight.
Frozen like her concept of heaven.

She is the bird,
the sermon of the season.

With no need to look
further than herself

or the flower.

The Drifts

2008-01-30T16:04:00.000-08:00

It snowed here after seventeen years
of not snowing.

The lower hills and the upper mountains
appeared out of nowhere.

Strangely dressed
as if suddenly they went mad
or reached enlightenment.

We didn’t know what to think of it.

The different world that brought a strangeness to the seaside.
An inexplicable mood to our approach.

We might as well have seen
a three headed grizzly bear.

Or a giant trotting over the mountain peaks.

Or a serpent swallowing up a fleet of white sails.

For a moment we forgot ourselves
and were lost in the drifts.

For a moment.

Not a Hair More

2008-01-25T13:05:00.000-08:00

We no longer try to capture
anything with our pens.

There is no description
that bring life to life.

We know this now.

Sure, it’s ok to write about the tides or the mud monsters
that people eat for hors d’oeuvres.

It’s ok to go on and on about seagulls in flight
or the curvatures of cliffs.

To scribble relentlessly over the angles of city streets
or the anonymity of cars
passing all day and all night.

As long as these things are what they are
in our words.

Lying on the page just as the flower blooms or the cat yawns.

Just as a field ignites in a storm
or the rain falls and keeps on falling.

Let our letters lie nakedly as they are,
and not a hair more.

The Weather Brings Us

2008-01-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

It wasn’t long ago
when we were screaming in the night
about who said what
as the rain streaked.

It wasn’t long ago
when we were figments of ourselves,
no longer sure about the subject of our screams
—ghosts in the driveway,
a hillside crumbling…

Sometimes we have to yell and gesture largely
when the storms come.

Sometimes we have to let the clouds fall on us
and sink into the mud
—our hairdos dunked,
our mascara flowing with the dirt.

Let this be our primal therapy
to become the rain,
the hillside,
the mud.

A scream into the huddled trees.

Extending as the rooftops, the thumping leaves,
a thousand dark ravines gathering water…

We don’t know who orchestrated this great simultaneous sobbing into the trenches,
when the dim yards reach saturation and everything spills forth.

We don’t know why when the weather rolls up with a bruise
and splits open
so do we.

Burn! Burn!

2007-11-27T16:33:00.000-08:00

We see houses as orange skeletons in dark neighborhoods on TV screens.
We see smoke rising and spreading like ink as if the earth were leaking.

As if the stuff of our world had released
all of its dark thoughts.

(The grasses giving in and going up.)
(The trees giving in and going up.)

Flames erasing Fall’s brilliance with a greater brilliance.
Racing up hillsides as an irresistible madness we all delight in.

Chanting “Burn! Burn!” under our breaths
with our fists clinched while the wind whips
everything into a frenzy.

We say, “Oh, that’s a pity!
But then want to run through a burning field
for our lives with everything we’ve got.

We say, “Oh, those poor people!”
But then conduct the fires from our couches
so that everything will burn and be alive again.

The headlines say “California is Burning!”
and we know the black landscapes are coming.
A world reduced to the bare bones of carbon
grays and shadow.

We want to stand on a bank or hilltop
and look out over a wasteland.

—A moon sparkling on a river,
dark ruins set against a night sky,
the last of the ashes floating down like snow flakes.

“Apocalypse isn’t so bad,”
we’ll tell ourselves and shrug.

Then move on to something else.

Unable to Touch

2007-11-16T10:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we were each other’s enemy
and today it’s Sunday.

There’s no telling how we got here
—looking up at a blank ceiling
having been defeated once again.

The autumn light is waning
and everything is left at a distance.

So we get up
and go our separate ways.

You, to Church.
Me, to breakfast,
and to another day of recording
what is faded or is fading.

Something about how the trees move
this time of year.

Something about how the flags flap over the avenues
on the whimsies of the gusts.

Or about how things touch, then are unable to touch.

Later, we’ll come back together
and I’ll have scribbled you a few lines
and you’ll have prayed about what we said last night.

Rock Doves

2007-11-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

Pigeon, you seem so restless
in all of your taking off and landing
and scuttling about.

You have gotten lost in alleyway life.
You have formed metropolis fixations.

Your little bird psyche
of subway and sidewalk
of rooftop and lonely sill.

Pigeon, have you forgotten your heritage
as symbol of the invisible?

Creature of city nooks.
Percher of our electric cords.

What are you a symbol of now?

I’ve heard neighbors call you
rats with wings.

I’ve heard women pinning up laundry
refer to you as termites of the sky.

When we have no one else, we let you
eat our crumbs.

When we consider you, it’s only
so that you won’t stain us
with your shit.

Pigeon, we no longer see you as dove
so tarnished,
so impure.

You are one of us now.

The Sun

2007-11-12T14:35:00.000-08:00

Even though everything we see is lit by it
as we deliver ourselves to the world
or forget to, in all of the commotion
of our to-and-fro lives…

We don’t bother to look up.

We don’t bother to watch it burn
or listen for its song on its way up.

There is little interest in the sun
unless it is dying or in birth.

The red of beginnings and endings
forever drawing us, bringing us to pause…
at least for a moment.

And when evening comes
and everyone walks through the darkening blue of the dusk
all of us drown together
all of us are drawn together in the loneliness of our drowning
walking quickly to escape
what we don’t know.

Our hands on our faces as if in silent scream.
Our eyes darting back and forth with their whites showing like wild horses.

When the sun disappears,
we are left to our own lights
and the shadows they cast.

With everything neglected in ourselves rising to the surface
as we step on the gas to get to saloons
hoping to drown our drowning with the factory spirits
that are shipped in huge containers
and sold in units as the currency of night.

We don’t know why night is so painful
or why the sun is our savior…

Waiting for the mountains to catch fire in first light
and for everything to become unified as a single vision.

All of the surfaces accounted for.
All of the objects in their proper places.

Solid and sure of themselves
like a good argument.

Red and Gray

2007-11-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

The hills are on fire.
The valleys and the mountains and the fields are burning.

And nobody asks what we did to cause this.
And nobody stops to ask what in us is on fire.

On some days the smoke drifts and covers the sun.
And the sun turns red like the fire is red
and the ashes rain down as a charcoal snow
and the people walking are stained by the sun
wearing white masks, drifting down streets
on bicycles.

Suddenly the earth is an alien terrain.
Suddenly we are all aliens on a hostile planet.

First, the wilderness dried out
because there was something missing from ourselves
as we went about our daily routines without moisture.

Then, the wildness of our hills leapt into flame
surrendering to the madness of firestorm
to the constant pressure of ignition from the sun.

Now, we are a city of ash
all uniting under a common skin of remnants.

Wilderness brought to our surface streets.

Grey billowing from the fires in our minds.

Specks of Wonder

2007-11-11T21:33:00.000-08:00

The day came and went,
and we had many passing thoughts.

None of which we could keep.

We watched processions of people
gathering on fogy street corners
as if anticipating something
but then dispersing.

We roamed from one coffee shop to the next
discussing the mist and how it pleases us,
the way it erases the city,
—amnesia literalized, we said
and set adrift.

We would walk just to watch things appear from no where.

Each object strange and magnificent.

A statue to itself.
Doing what it does best.

Fitting perfectly into the cosmos,
then disappearing.

We marveled at the erasure of the world
and speculated about the continued existence of things
after they passed us by
or the ones we never thought of.

There were a thousand conversations we could’ve had
but only had one or two,

keeping the rest to ourselves
as mist seems do dictate,
shrouding street after street
until opened by our feet.

The fog came, then later it was gone
and there was nothing left to talk about.

With the fixtures of the city so plain and obvious.

—The mountains painfully present.
—The sky concealing nothing.

—The Great Unknown with nowhere to hide.

So we resumed our thinking about the obvious
going our separate ways
to our obvious tasks
with their obvious masks

without so much as a hint of grey
or a speck of wonder.