Light slat //

Evening Light at Redwood State Park

Light slat // leaf quake
         cat perched in
         its lonely wooden tower
         birdsong taunting

Light slat // hive whir
	the sudden metropolis
	that gnats make 
	try to watch just one
	it hovers until houdini

Light slat // old growth
	the smell of honey
	probably fungus
	moss dry this time of year
	ground crackling

Light slat // soft breath
	angle impossible 
	and yet
	she’s spotlit
	the sun too tilting to see

---

One of the great things about summer is the way light finds its way into new nooks and crannies. Depending on the time of day, this can turn a simple walk (or sit!) into a guided tour of noticing. This poem is a collection of moments from the last week when a thin beam of light highlighted something that I otherwise would have overlooked or not viewed with the same reverent attention.

Shoutout to Leonard Cohen for the “lonely wooden tower” language. It’s from a verse in Suzanne that was pretty revelatory for shaping both my love of poetry and lyrics:

And Jesus was a sailor when He walked upon the water
And He spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower
And when He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him
He said all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But He himself was broken long before the sky would open
Forsaken almost human, He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

A few things I’ve been reading:

• The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing: A personal essay turned non-fiction essay collection about the history of (some) gardens, wilding and the idea of paradise.

• Sweet Hearts by Melanie Rae Thon: A beautiful, haunting and challenging book about generations of a family in Montana. It's a tough one to recommend given some difficult subject matter but very few authors put as much thought into heightening every sentence.

• Half-Light by Frank Bidart: A Pulitzer-winning collection by an innovative and cherished contemporary poet. I’m sure both the focus on light and the punctuation in my poem today are inspired by this indirectly.

• Smoke and Ash by Amitav Ghosh: A fascinating book about the history of the opium trade and how it has shaped communities and culture. Ghosh is incredible at centering a non-human element as a protagonist (the poppy) in order to tell a story about humans. Highly recommend.

With gratitude,