don't dare wander

The darkness comes so much more quickly now.

That’s what separates summer from fall. The feeling of finality. Fatality. Limits. Deadlines creep up- we feel the stress of winter coming. Even though we long ago found ways around preparing for the winter, gathering food and wood to store, deep inside us we still feel the season’s urgency. Get Things Done, it says. Can’t put off till tomorrow anymore- by then the snows might be here. You can pull the blinds tight against the earlier dark, but it sneaks in around the cracks, tap tap tapping on shoulders, “Shouldn’t you have finished that by now? You know you’ll regret not doing it sooner.” You already regret not doing it sooner but somehow the reminder puts you off. You push away the feeling and leave it later and later. This is what the darkness does.

concerns of you

I found a bone in the woods today, bleached white and so delicate, and then the rain started. I took it home with me and placed it in the box you made me before you had to go. Missing you is getting harder. I forgot to wake up today, but Dr. Queen didn’t get mad. He said meet him later, but sometimes I don’t like the way he smiles. I like your smile better. Too bad you took all the oceans south with you and I’m still here with my paper. Sorry your letter got soaked, I know I promised I’d take better care, but I never remember my rain slicker before I close the door. My mind can’t hold concerns of anything but you.

write your own story

He flew off west, and after the setting sun made his shadow unintelligible, we never saw him again

love poems

          Today I woke up and something was different. I think I dreamed about you. I wasn't tired when I got up this morning. My eyelids stayed open instead of asking to close again like they usually do. I think my top and bottom eyelids must be in love with each other, because they always seem to want to be together. I do a lot of sleeping here.
          Aaron wrote me a poem yesterday. He says he is in love with me, but I know better. So I wrote him a poem back explaining why he shouldn't be in love with me, but I don't think he really understood it. If someone wants to be in love, there's nearly nothing you can do to stop them. And I love you, but you're way aways down south with the storms. You laughed, but be careful please.

it started quietly

It's difficult to get used to the turning here, and I'm very sorry for the lack of posts, but I'm starting to settle in. Time is changeable, you know? But I get to see the sun rise over the valley each morning. Nevermind the early wakeup.

I like morning times because they are quiet.  Nights are loud and bright with possibility and silver and hope. But mornings are still, as if the world is still remembering how to fill the place with sound.  the world is bigger in the mornings- emptier. Nights are close, but in the morning the atmosphere is stretched out and clean. And if you have time to sit and watch it fill up with a cup of coffee while it cools enough for you to gulp down, well then. So much the better.

call to study

"and I plan to be forgotten when I'm gone, 'cause I'll be leavin in the fall"

I've gone away to school dears, far away to the mountains where Autumn kicks up her skirts early and whirls round and round with old man Winter until they two collapse in a pile indistinguishable. The twilight here feels, as if its always known you, and the buildings watch over us as they have for countless generations. Tradition is the most important thing you can have and the ghosts hold it tight. They creak through the abandoned mill across the river, faithfully blowing their mournful horns, a call to work, though no one answers but us anymore. We go to class with ghosts, go to sleep, eat with them, as many as the living here; the city even a ghost of its former self, struck down by the new age of computerization.

glass beads and old lace

Apologies about the absence. Been thinking about string and how it ties together, leads back to the start. I'm headed towards a new start as the year closes in on its final lap, wondering what needs to be left behind and if snow really does make a sound when it falls. Just when I'm supposed to be letting go, history holds on all the tighter- crumbling family albums and Grandfather so handsome in his uniform and navy cap, no wonder Grandmother waited. Bicycles and army tanks in Rome, and the gifts he brought back sit sentinel on the chest of drawers