My first book of poetry, Kestrel and other songs, is available now! You can order it at the button below. Thank you for reading poetry.
Confusing Carnage for Cleanliness
A boomtown is now
a reservation that sells fireworks, marked
by the orange kite sun-bleached
to pink, mirroring the morning.
It still kites, though clenched in the jaw
of that old gnarled madrone at the gaping
place where the forest meets the sea.
All it takes is breath, like
life, a clarinet, or the stack
of papers scattering like ash.
Most letters that mention kings only
do so in passing. Instead, embalming
the fleeting quality of night, witnessing
the first tiger at a roadshow, or
a brother’s sudden turn.
Letters that mention brother sing
mostly of love.
Finch song is either
no emphasis or all emphasis.
Maybe they’re lamenting
the sorry state of bug guts,
now that windshields have retired early
and we could see the fish ladder weeping too,
if not for all that water. An osprey barrels
into the water to grab a salmon, carries it
dripping. Whispers in its ear
that they too are mourning.
This poem is about forgotten histories—what we remember, what we don’t. What we choose to forget, what is forgotten for us.
I have a suite of very distinct childhood memories of being in the backseat as my dad drove across Kansas. Whenever we stopped, he’d always have to scrub off the windshield because of the Jackson Pollock of bug guts that caked on throughout the drive. It’s strange to miss them, stranger to fear what it means that they’re gone.
I’ve recently started practicing classical guitar again, which has been wonderful. In trying to learn some new tunes, I’ve been struck (anew) by the difficulty of making an instrument move like a voice, or an expression. Listening to someone like Segovia, there are so many phrases that just feel like an exhale, somewhere between in time and out of time. Beautiful!
As mentioned in a previous Into Wind, D and I recently finished reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, a delightful mid-19th Century mystery novel. In that novel, the post office appears to be a main character, chucking letters across England in the blink of an eye. It has me thinking about the post.
With Gratitude,