Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalanche, clarity, friendship, hiking on July 6, 2020| 3 Comments »
We speak the way old friends speak—
knowing each other’s stories,
the nuances and undertones.
She always knows just what to ask,
just how to nudge me toward
quiet revelation. I don’t do my best
to hide. In fact, it is easy
to speak of my brokenness.
We pause in a field
where the forest has been felled
in an avalanche—
the slender white trunks are strewn
in a chaotic jumble—
but oh, how clear the view.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalanche, connection, Corona Virus on March 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
That was the afternoon
we watched the avalanches—
dozens and dozens of them
flowing over the cliff bands.
How beautiful they were
from a distance—
bright falls of billowing snow.
They began as dark rumble,
then burst into plume, into rush.
Unstoppable they were.
Powerful. Inevitable.
Such a gift to feel humbled,
to exult in forces
greater than our own.
Later that night, reading
the tumbling graphs,
the sliding accounts,
the unforgiving reports,
I began to understand
the scale of the cliff.
And as everything
I thought I knew
slid over the escarpments
of comprehension,
how clear it all became.
What really matters.
How we’re all in this together.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalanche, death, loss, poem, poetry on January 4, 2014| 2 Comments »
the map is shrinking
still, all tremble, we plot
the points that remain
*
in the rush,
in the roar, in the rumble
the silence after
*
I hate white
this is no confession
I hate it
*
the body, crushed,
lungs, crushed, shape of a man
dug up
*
not my nephew,
not my blood, still
these tears
*
howl turns to yelp
turns to gurgle turns
to snow catching sun
*
where in my body
is there white? how
might I forgive it
*
out from under,
this struggle, we take turns,
sometimes it’s personal
*
sometimes the white says
don’t come near me, sometimes it sings
your name
*
I did not read
the obituary, only your letter
black scratch on white
*
blank page, blank page,
white cloud, white skull, white slope
another blank page