something about moving around the mountains
that rise up in the distances
as i pedal south, sun on face
feeling warmed and in motion and alive
_______
the unnamed phenomenon of returning to
moving around each other in the kitchen
one of us washing, one of us putting dishes away
and the sharpness of my spatial memory
remembering where the glasses, plates, bowls, cups go
_______
the plastic-wrapped plates
of homemade banana chocolate chip muffins
on the table
made for her neighbors who didn’t answer their doors
_______
are you ever lonely out there she asks
as i work my way through one of the muffins
_______
turns out i can cozy up on the couch just fine
i note, laughing, when we discuss
my cuddling capabilities
_______
the drips dropping from the gutter
slow and one by one
landing in the parsley growing
in a five gallon buket below
_______
the scruffle of pigeons up in the gutters
as sunset approaches while i gather
kale and mizuna and cilantro
from rachel’s winter
desert garden
_______
how, when we hug, we hold on
(in kitchens, in back yards, in patches of sun
sometimes standing next to our bicycles)
_______
helicopter circling with its search light
grazing the ground as i bike
under an otherwise star-packed sky
down grande
where i am lucky enough to have the cover of home,
the safety of documentation
_______
hazel pushing half the energy bar towards me slowly
across the table while we tea-sip and laugh
expounding upon the quandries of niceness vs. excitement
with a little bit of attachment theory on the side
fire break and prairie lung
the burn of
smoke in lungs and
the panic in my pulse and the
leaning in to do what i have to do and the
pulling back at the searing which strangely
only arises on my biceps
(and face)
_______
we clink the tips of our
flame-tamping shovels in the are above us
as we stand at the edge of
charred field
sweat-saoked and snot-slobbered i say
something about sandhill scouts
earning our prairie fire badges
_______
lounging pondside under
treebranches and vines
the appearance of a goldfinch
the call of red-winged blackbirds
the sight of two spiders sparring on shared branch
(furry and black with a red back half)
and a small blue-white-grey-black bird
(finch size) with long beak
landing atop
dam deck
_______
drying on towel
sun on skin and limbs
still sweating
book opened i think
this is a form
of love
_______
what happened trish asks
regarding my red splotched biceps
hours after standing flame-side
in field nine tamping the
wander of too-quick-moving fire
on a day of indecisive wind and
four newbies who laugh beforehand
at being four newbies out here
on our own
_______
mica, tookie, ty and i
on front porch in past-sunset dark
sound of talk and frogs/toads i ask
for a silhouette charade demo of
how to clear the clogged
flour grinder
_______
tookie’s grandpa-voice saying
fire break and praire lung
and tyler and i laughing
so hard at this whole
field nine prairie burn amateurs fiasco
tears rivulet down
my cheeks
_______
i’m ok with being alone i say
sitting atop the old well with trish
as sky pastels and clouds over
before trish breaks down attachment theory
and says something about a dating pool
of avoidants which is suddenly hilarious
to us both
_______
first eve this season of sleeping
with windows open pond-dwelling
choruses calling up
to my dreaming ears
_______
detail collector 