A short walk through town
resurrects countless buildings
that exist now only in other forms.
Businesses and houses alike 
loom over us with the weight of years,
but the houses that cast the largest shadows
are the ones that are no longer there,
a grassy square or paved and pebbly lot.
These spaces were the pillars that housed the infrastructure
that defined the character of the whole town,
and even when they are gone,
physicality positions us back in the world
as a reminder of connected temporality.
We see a friend we once saw there, 
albeit now in a separate place,
alone, disparate, although still smiling. 
These firm structures show us
that the breakdown is part of the building-up
and add to the story instead of subtract from it,
something others might call 
a je ne sais quoi when English fails us,
just as the current world fails to bring back 
those buildings we walk by only in memory now.

It’s no wonder you have stopped
frozen
while the crowd streams around
mid snarl 
now confronted with something honest and beautiful.
Torn from your plodding 
you stare all of a minute
the array of festive merriness faded,
forgotten

I have returned with my old honey jar
full of water from the drinking fountain
in front of the community center

Clutching it’s beehive shape
to my blue chrysoprase
somewhere in endless black
Indigo dye wafting
from my cloud necklace

I observe you transfixed
but I
want to yell at you

“Hey face!
Bring that face just a bit nearer
here,
to this pricipital cave of dreaming
Take this home inside you
like heaping bowls of hand churned strawberry ice cream.
Do not be afraid
this is also you
I’ve only made this easy for you to carry and consume.
Transmute your understanding
of what it is to live.”

I planted my garden
seed in black soil
and it rains.
I buried my friend
coffin in brown soil
and it rained.
I wrecked my car
blood and glass on asphalt
washed pink in the rain.
I sprinted down the street
picked you up off your feet
your face stained by tears and rain.
I sat on the porch.
Draws on my pipe, pulls of bourbon
and it rains.
I fitfully sleep
in the thunder and the heat
tin roof singing from the rain.
No matter the season
in nature or my life
the one constant
bathing it all in cool twilight
falling from the heavens
just like tonight
it rains.

I ended up sitting in my car again
examining raindrops racing

down the windshield in a pop-up storm
lightning etching the sky in jagged flashes

punctuated by booms of thunder,
me stagnant on the edge of Main Street

watching traffic come and go behind the
curtain of rain.

There’s comfort in this in-betweenness—
the world in motion,

me in stillness,
just a breath

separating before and after,
a moment

too soft to call a storm
but too heavy

to ignore.

Hot, humid, muggy
It feels like it’s rained for weeks
The lightning lasts too long
Thunder shakes the house
The rain is coming down fast,
Mean and loud
The TVs turn off
The clouds a charcoal grey
Everything is dark
Some cars rushing home
Some terrified to move
One little message on our screen,
And we’re all suddenly focused
On what’s happening around us

Past the wind farm
Around the farm houses
Up and down the rolling hills
We wander toward the camp
Smell of northern pine woods
Winding up through a canopy
Of sugar maples and poplars,
White pine and  birch groves,
We reach a hidden oasis,
Surrounded by red and sugar maples,
Where four women can relax,
Build a fire and commune
With the Adirondacks. 

6/18/25
KW

there’s not enough said 
about an overturned bike 
lying on its side 
in a overgrown lawn
with the porch gate half open 
chickens
as orange puffs 
with a sun 
drooping below 
the ridgeline

There are some days 
When everything feels 
Like an itch you need 
To scratch the hide off
A tickle in the back
Of your throat that 
No amount of water 
Can quench the thirst 
When you have clenched 
Your fists and teeth and jaw 
Until your bones might shatter 
You bite your tongue 
Until you taste blood 
Swallowing down the words
Its better than the guilt 
That would lay in the pit
Of your stomach 
If you spoke them 
In to existence 

I can sleep through any storm, when your hair is there to calm me, with its sent of lavender and lotion and love.