Tag Archives: Mt Spokane

Knowing How To Fall

13 Friday Aug 2021

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“I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down –”

I will trace your body with my fingers,

I will kneel before you with cupped hands,

Because that’s what it is to love,

To memorize this moment we inhabit,

To see your chest rise and fall

In mutual breath and beating hearts.

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? 

All those who have passed, there,

beyond the smoke, is the mountain:

Minutes, seconds, days, and months

Turn to years, but always the mountain,

Who recognizes only eternity.

And here, we embrace in its shadow,

Speak words, like living things do.

Comfort, does it comfort you

to hear your name spoken from my lips,

To know, someone will fall down

When you’re gone?

*Italics are verses from, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

All the Bright Things

16 Thursday Apr 2020

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The sun wakes through a morning window,

stretches itself over the horizon, smiles,

says, it will be a good day,

for horses to lay down and dream,

and I walk into its warmth,

almost able to hope, almost.

The sun persists to midday,

wakes the mountain, still white with snow,

and transforms its peak into a picture,

and if I could paint–

but I will, instead, think it,

in memory of last summer’s huckleberries,

picked there, there, half way up–

the sun smiles again

imagining the sweet boughs,

dark blue berries.

That’s what hope is, it says,

all the things you can see,

like memory,

made bright again.

What We Don’t Own

23 Friday Mar 2018

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What a strange thing to own,

A view of Mt Spokane,

Windows, frame this home,

And look out toward its peak,

Covered in snow, and tinged

Orange by the sun rising in the East.

No wind, the sky is blue and brilliant,

With a few stray, stratus clouds

And a meandering sparrow.

It’s the kind of day that smiles,

Like I remember you smile,

And your eyes, always trying

To be kind, and painfully respectful,

Even when you should not be.

The Way

28 Saturday Jan 2017

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The way the sun lit the branches of the aspen,

Traced the snow-lined needles of the Ponderosa,

Shone off each blade of grass in the dry circle

underneath that great pine, surrounded by snow.

 

I said, the way, as if it would lead to a thought,

But, in fact, it leads to fog, or the lifting of it,

Near the tiny Lilac bushes,

And, further still, across the blanket of snow–

A blanket that someone lay upon,

But not under, leaving an impression of a body,

The soft parts, blown away

From the crisp, frozen parts.

Look further still, through the lifting,

You’ll see the great Spokane Mountain,

And all the trees and houses

Which lead from here to there.

 

For a moment, you may think you can touch it,

Stretch, reach out your hand,

Trace your fingertips along its lonely edges,

And lift it into your arms.