Poem-A-Day #157 : Wood (Part 4 : On Bears)

Wood (Part 4 : On Bears)

It's the scar that is a forest fire but on my hand : thin thread-like thing that aches in the rain : Do you suppose that the forest aches in the rain that it feels intensely what has come before like a phantom limb : over here was Jerry he was a good tree I miss Jerry : or do you suppose the forest forgets immediately : that to continue for so long you have to drop the baggage at the door :

There's a theory that you are most likely to forget if you go through a doorway : something about exiting a space and entering another causes the brain to lose track of itself : it's the need to reconfigure : the brain has to analyze and create the room you are going in to so it drops the one you left at the threshold in a sort of shopping bag that it can come back to in a moment if needed :

Brains are correcting for interference at all times : turning things right side up changing the color making sense of the live feed coming from all directions : all fingers in the air looking for which way the wind blows :  stick your finger in your mouth : which way does it blow : you don't have to do that but it's always good to know the weather :

I stayed at a small casita in Taos for three months working on a novel : the walls were always cool to the touch and felt smooth like porcelain : the front door was thick wood that wouldn't close all the way you'd have to shoulder it in place while you turned the lock or it would pop open in the middle of the night after everything cooled :

There was a large black bear that hung around the place and would raid the trash at night : once when I was feeling particularly brave I flung open the door and yelled into the night : the bear sat a few feet away eating some paper my outburst had forced it to pause mid-bite : it stared at me like a child caught eating cookies before dinner I apologized and watched it until it was done :

I've only had a moment with one other bear : I was in the car and it was raining it must have been in high school or the first year after I started college so 1999 or 2000 or something like that : it was raining and we stopped at the bank because my mother was driving and needed cash from the ATM and for some reason she stopped not in a parking spot : probably because it was raining :

My grandmother and I were in the car and two small bear cubs came from around the corner of the bank towards the main road and then across it quickly the mother came next watching head back and forth searching for danger : we held out breath even though we were a good distance from her : she looked at us then went : my mother came moments later and didn't believe us :

Poem-A-Day # 96 : Line

Line

The line becomes the edge of the forest that you weren't allowed to cross when you were nine and then the line turns green and then the line softens and branches fall into the cornfields that run up to the line they are yellow and sometimes fallow and always delicious over a grill with butter running on your chin the line becomes a symbol for things not attainable for the mysteries of life and within the line is darkness moss possibly bears oh my what is that sound the one like celery bring twisted in your fists the one that is both dry and so very full of liquid is there a creek in there full of frogs and small fish to stare at for hours we could name them naming is a fine thing to do Adam named the things in the garden is this a garden are we even religious is there even a grounds for religion in a world where that could happen where this could happen where the line is hardening is a thing drawn in trapper keepers and thought about is a monster that attacks in the night out of the closet a line like a knife trying to two dimensionally suffocate you by filling in the spaces in your lungs with scribbles -

Poem-A-Day #83 : Spring Break

Spring Break

The slope comes to the riverbank
where it is absorbed by the rounded pebbles
and the smell of damp

New trees pop from the edges of clear
they are leafing and basically twigs in mud
placed there by a child or parent of a child

Sound of frogs and of birds
cicadas cocophaning in the limbs of larger wood
they will all fall soon make a snow of bodies

How fucking clear is this water
and cold
it fills with flash bang fish and noise

The clouds catch on mountains and pull seams
like two hands ripping off a tank top
everything pours into our eyes