listening to sharon van etten's album 'because i was in love' is like hearing the sounds of an unlit attic with one little shuttered window. sometimes i find it melancholy. but it is more that the songs are very fragile.

"Bet you don't remember how we met. That's okay, it hasn't yet. Although we had the same dream." -sve




it always felt lonely to be this shade. the shade of
clouds. the shade of moths

when i found out
there was to be no forgetting

blue is the color. gauze the disguise.
the weight of seasons in my eyes

it is because i am from the water
and water is heavy to bear

as its purpose is not to be borne

it is because i feel the sea
and it pulls at me as if with strings

and wants to remind me of home.

blue is the color of
my song

slow and somehow
tidal in its ways

light my pyre

As spring ascends I recall the spring most recently past.

I was flushed with a certain disconcerting sort of love. It lay very heavy on my tongue, like funereal coins; copper currency which I exchanged for a touch from the night static. By May the heat of the air had attained an intoxicating strength. I kept a corkscrew in my car and inhabited caves.

Each time I went underground, I stole as much as pockets could reasonably carry. A handful of rough glances, a scratchy black bouquet. Cigarettes and joint-hits and sips of wine, purple as blood in the veins. I was so smeared with ash, so doom-bound, so alive: Full of electric light; the flint of fear, and night, and morning.

candles photo courtesy: hannah jewett

ernestine (batastini) hummel

on the beach

I was raised by the sea shore, and everything which I have known I have simply borrowed from it.

I have borrowed the ocean’s cold capable strength; heard kind words and turned my face resolutely away.

I have borrowed the sand’s exhausting infinity and allowed myself for a spell to be tired.

I have on occasion borrowed heat which rendered me more lucid, and allowed me to see every one and every thing in the quick bright flash of mirrors in the sun.

I have borrowed a stone through which one can peer and when I did

I loved every one.

I have borrowed the feather of a sea bird which spoke a word of summer. I have held myself in my own arms on grey mornings.

I have learned the times of the tides from my father.

I have known the feel of night water, and all that which comes with night water--

stars and words and skin. I have known May and June. I have borrowed February and August and, once in January

many moonstones and a new skin

recalling some nights

My Bacchanalian evenings went uninformed. I sometimes test their fabric with slightly older fingers. I loved many things; many times. I have been rung like a rag by tides of energy and fright,

wrists burned by ropes too tight,

My own motivations mysterious to me. Summer heat and cactus liquor, pulling me up by my own limp arms, sent me staggering to brave and bait the keeper of some other cave, yellow-eyed, deep in the red dirt.

adeline gilchrist (right) and her sister.

the humphreys property in dutch flat, ca

was their home away from home many years

before any humphreys. she wrote a leaflet called

dutch flat: a brief history on its 100th birthday

and it was published

in 1951.

Adeline graduated from Miss Ransom and Miss Bridge's School, in Alameda, in 1916:

"Mrs. Guy Gilbert GILCHRIST (Adeline Easton HOWARD) is president of the Alumnae Association. She comes to school occasionally, and on those visits her one-year-old son is a most popular visitor."

Dust: part four

My own path isn't the sort that can be reduced to sand by a glance. The sage is dry and months old crumbling in my hand

I thought I had a host of liberating reasons. To no one's surprise but mine

I was young

Walking with my feet in the thick dirt dust all rising with the breeze. Walking through the mission to the place where I can breathe

And recalling my indiscretions I've got no wounds left to leech. My blood is flowing through the dirt dust

Red and clean. My blood is flowing warm and wet all over me

Until I roll myself in the live oak leaves and scratched and dirty light my own

Spring pyre

Miner's Country

A stranger tried to unclasp my hands from the reins. Drew me from my cave into the light of unpredictable day. But I cannot set the

bones that you broke in the course of your play. Can't anticipate the curves of

Another's highway. I never knew for sure

just dug my toes into the clay. Somehow I have been made weightless by this place. With no need to declare

I would not stake a claim. All that I've got; all that I gave. They seem one and the same. My desire is lent mostly to my longing for a respite in the miner's country.

the lady of the lake has been called by so many names. she was lancelot's foster mother / mother, a sometimes faery queen, and always the keeper of excalibur

arthurian legends inspired quite a lot of romantic art. i find that the stories also make incredibly good leisure reading. they draw from an oratory tradition with a really significant radius-- Ireland to Spain; the celtic reign was far reaching. Marie de France's lais were mostly attributed to Brittany, and they are oh so fantastic.

vernal equinox

mine was the unholy office, held aloft

by will which in the morning rose green

but withered dry and grey

then slumped exhausted on its

dying day

now in the wake of

new branches

seeking

a grove

the unobstructed sky provides a vast bed

sprawling edgeless

circular,

a chunk of pine amber to warm the palm.

a chunk of pine amber:

charged with a merciful

warm electrical crackle

making itself an open vessel

for any breed of grief

once fragmented, i was

a crumbling sandstone city

contaminated byre

funeral pyre

seeing nothing but end

after death after end

cold, without clothes

sought a grove and found a wasteland

sought a doe although

the doe who does not run is dead

but nevermore a hunter will be led within the grove

unless it is as legend long has said:

the traitor will be buried alive,

within the oak's cleft:

a crack exposed only wide enough

to keep him drunk with death

a bolt of lightning illuminates

that all that is new

is all that is left

and that was a seductive look,

young:

cast off that sullen disposition, you are

young

and if you ever step over my weeds

to beseech

an open vessel, free of lead and

free of grief

you will find my body placid, murky

green

shimmering, stirring

nearly imperceptibly, a young thing

spring begins to bend and flow