the blueshift journal

Into a new last taking in

of the summer air before

they sell the house away.

Pasta with a wine sauce.

A smoke on the deck

into the silences of June,

into the pine forest.

What we do in the dark

keeps the dark at bay,

some coming back

as love. Wake early

to bicycle the incline,

thinking of star nurseries.

Thinking old, old already:

paintings of sunflowers

in a freezing Amsterdam

 

on gold walls in fat gold.

 

You’ve said it before,

 

work does not make free,

 

an orchestra plays

 

the frozen canal. I see

 

a field of whispering

 

glowing below a murder

 

of commas, I seek trees

 

in this Farmer’s Valley,

 

this meadow in Nebraska sewn

 

with settlers and soldiers and hardly a valley.

 

Oak, black locust, birch, elm—

 

decency allows a bit of giving up.

 

A branch goes crashing

 

free of body,

 

expires inside of house.