The snow is late, and the elk stand
In pools of rain
Eating grasses
Bull’s head & antlers
Silhouette
On the crest of a hill
Guarding
As if he’s art, a still life
Defensive, protective
Motionless
Moving away only when
The last cow disappears
“I am just...,” I thought.
The trail is flooded
My hands don’t mean anything
Drips of rain on top of pools
Though I have yet to hear it, I know the small river will have a voice. It will have a voice childish in play, raw in wisdom, soothing in tone. I know this, for I have heard its voice many times.
I bring with me other voices. Our voices. The voices of how we once talked with one another.
These voices, the small river and us, will dart between the sound of current, ravens and hawks, the creaking of tall evergreens as their branches rub against each other. If you were going with me, I would have told you how baby hawks cry when their parents have gone hunting for them. But you don’t need to hear this and you won’t.
I’ve gone missing, right in front of you. I could have told you to never be in the forest when it’s snowing. Not even a small river can tell you the way back. And today, perhaps, I will not want to find my way back. ......But I will. I know this before I reach it.
For a short period of time, when I see the small river, I will no longer miss you, whoever you are, for I know your voice, but I do not know you and you do not know me. I have never felt the bones beneath your skin, the slight roughness of your lips. I have not smelled the scent of your favorite oil. I’ve never heard your song muffled between the walls of our house leaking out into the hallway.
I do know the small river will be strewn with boulders mixed in its current. There will be channels, and miniature rapids will have formed. Even these small rivers have different types of flows.
There will be an occasional chipmunk running into the brush, the distant echo of a bird. The wind will flirt with these sounds. Then, without warning, the wind will drown out all voices. Even those of my quiet steps in the snow where would-be tears make no imprint.
The leaves have all but fallen
And the trail is a carpet of them.
The hills and roots remain constant...
Ridges and bumps between yellows
Reds, and browns
Where my feet pass cautiously
Not wanting to be fooled by
The softness of the ground below.
The air can be dry and crisp
Or temperate and soggy in the fall
And it is during this season
That the trail appears painted,
Textured, warped, dabbed onto
Curled around, twisted into
The unforgiving floor of Earth.
But I am affixed to this rug
And the colors of fall
Reflect
What is inside me, at times.
For I know what it means to fall,
To feel the wetness of leaves,
Peeling them off my palms,
Their earthy scent inhaled.
A volunteer walks the trail.
I see her occasionally
With nametag dangling
From a shirt pocket.
She says people sometimes get lost.
I act surprised, though I understand.
Passion can hit us hard
On the side of our emotions
And sometimes all you can do
Is check for bruises...
And keep those feet moving...
Though the ground is covered in leaves.
The east wind
Driven by the river gorge
Has no trouble in being found
For it is the one searching for us
In a scurry, frantic, indeterminate
Then, in a moment of thought
Directed, certain, content.
Much like us.
The wind etches the river below it.
An artist’s symmetry, capillary waves
Hides the river’s speed
Slowed by the dam above
From rapids once free, where
Many have sunk beneath
Its undertows and swirls. Yet
Branches, trees, and debris bob
Appearing happy in its current.
Death is the happy wader
Within the sad body
Who still desires to see the ocean
Resurfacing upon drifts and beaches
Heading west, this wind
Arrives at valley views
To play with city & street
Roaming around the deciduous
Deciding to spread & sprawl out
Over fields of strawberries and grapes
Long past their harvest
Knocking on our windows
With the help of rain and sleet
Peering at us with a shake and rattle
While we hold our mixtures of
Sweets & wine, love & despair
Much like the wind holds fast onto the air.
November stilled.
Air hangs like ether
Carrying the distant sleepy
Songs of circular saws
Counterpoint of cars, and the
Periodic rise of a child’s laughter.
This sound seeps
Between definition and opaque
Holding fast to forgotten fields
Lost............In............Words
Found in wind-frayed books of years
Settled in greys and grasses
Ruffled by the hum of eyes.
Fall is a field of words.
There is a crispness to clear cool fall days.
The leaves... wait for the first real rain.
Chestnuts, who fall first, appear like
Pebbles on the streets, eventually smashed
Into an orange/brown bumpy pulp pavement.
A stubborn rhododendron flower lingers
Hidden beneath summer cooked foliage
Hops a ride, sticking to the bottom of a shoe.
When the first real rain hits, there’s a warmth
Not as in heat or the first pinch of spring
More like putting on a coat, and the clouds
Come down to street level to mingle with
Pedestrians who have changed their gait
From brisk strides, bright postures, & loud talk
To walking with arms bundled tight, close
To their sides, sometimes crossed, heads bent
Under the slight heaviness of hats & hoods
In a silence which weighs nothing at all.
The volcano is still a mountain
For it can catch clouds
Force the rain to fall
Sculpt nearby hills.
Gone is its snowy top
Thousands of feet lost
To air, sky, and atmosphere
Settled down to ash and dust.
But this just gives birth
To new open lands
Where the wild chipmunk
Is a bit more exposed, and
The eagle hangs upon new
Thermals and air currents
They...
Who live close know
The volcano is still a mountain.
The volcano invites you to watch
The slow tangle of clouds
Talk & tumble amongst themselves
The new grasses that make up
desert-like fields, inhabit space
Where tall evergreens once stood.
Creeks have been given new paths.
Even a group of crows
Crying in their best city voices
Cannot break the volcano’s presence.
They appear like children at a playground
Full of noise, laughter, bratty, and playful.
The volcano welcomes these tricksters.
Unlike the city, there is plenty of room for
Them to wander off and stillness returns.
Which is enough for you to notice.
Notice what the volcano wants you to see.
The distant lake sandwiched between
A valley under the veil of rain,
Small dune-like hills of old ash.
The cougar, elk, and mountain goat’s
Footprints, along with yours, embedded
In the leftover dust of the mountainside.
Fragile prints on top of bare earth.
But it is stillness.
That is the volcano's most important reveal.
For the sights that surround you
Stand still, as if they were painted time
Frozen on easel and canvas.
Here, you can look and see
With eternity in your eyes
Even though you know
Everything is forever temporary
And you are but a stroke of a paintbrush
That is still moist.
Here’s a poem of mine published by Spillwords. To be honest, I’m not that impressed with their use of AI art. It changed the meaning of the poem. That’s how strong images play into words. I appreciate your support! T. Ahzio
And I don’t know why I want to begin with and.
Perhaps, it’s because my life is a conjunction, where I’m continually moving from and to persons, places, and things.
Just like you, I’m always in the middle of something.
Yet, and is tricky.
One must be careful to avoid “this bad thing happened, and that led to this bad circumstance.”
One might try to mediate their way out of that kind of and with long engagements with commas, em-dashes - semi-colons; and (parenthesis.)
But that is precarious and can lead to stringing things out for too long.
I think the answer is found by being careful with ands and taking time and patience to produce good ands.
Some ands that I have planned out have become successful, such as writing and revising.
I think one of the coolest is “We met and fell in love.”
And an and can be friendly and downright cute.
How could pralines and cream exist without a nice and to bring them together?
And what about the ampersand?
How many symbols can look cool and bring clauses together at the same time?
Hyphen, em-dash? They don’t come close.
Where would we be without ands?
The beginning? Nowhere to go? The end, plain, simple, uneventful?
So, I guess my desire to start with and is my way of honoring the conjunction, for this ode is a continuation from all my writing before to all my writing to come.
Pronouns, proper names and objects are wonderful places to begin, and I highly recommend them, and I wouldn’t be writing without them.
But nothing would continue for anything or anybody without an and.
Cylindrical thoughts caught in symbols
Covered by an outer celluloid
Upgraded with playbacks and reruns
Of old friends and fictions who are everyone
They were, will, and want to be,
Births, rebirths, death, and immortality
I speak in repetition, stumbling into you again
No wonder gravity forms balls and circles
Our dialectic, a language of insomnia
That living lip sync of teeth and tongue
That make up the shapes of ghosts
Crawling like faint shadows of moving clouds
Our fleshy hearts tethered to the whirl
Internal, speaking of the external
Of clocks mistuned inside the unsteady continuum
With our linear kissing and stove top stuffings
Perhaps this is our mistake
Caught inside the act of noise
Trying to explain the hyacinth
“Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”
Speach vanishes, with the incoming of golds
Browns, yellows, and reds.
Autumn turns, turns, turns, while the
Wind haunts sticks and stems, looking
Forward to their recycling, and our
Eyes old and new
Peering
MoonCat 