Poem: You, the Road

All day I barely notice you; I just press
my imprecise steps into your curves.
I’m on my way somewhere, I know it –
but you just see me walking, don’t you?
I push through your noisy crowded
colors, your kaleidoscope of humans
and their fabrics, of buildings and their
blessed doors and windows. We’re all
on our way somewhere, all of us,
but at night:

You fold into yourself for me, and you roll out
an asphalt glimmer containing all the city’s
splendor in one knowing wink. My
wheels answer the riddles of your tilts and
bumps; your hard concrete carves the blood
through my veins and makes my vessels swell.
You met me here under the cover of night,
didn’t you? And now I understand you, now
we have this secret meeting place.

All day you belong to everyone, but at night
you’re all mine. I spread my fingers wide to catch
the wind, and you send it whispering through.
When I listen I can hear you, warm and rumbling
like the Earth itself. But mostly I feel you: fast under
my wheels, a blur if I’m doing it right,
always a little sweat on my lip and a grin
on my face, that’s you.

I’m always folding up during the day, moving
predictably like I’m supposed to. But alone
with you I bloom like a night-lily; I open wide, wide,
wide till my ribcage gives and my breath unfurls
into dusk-silver ribbons that go streaming
through the cool air. Whatever notions
I had before, whatever expectations or
disappointments, they are gone: ground to dust
between my wheels and your timeless grey.

There’s only motion; that’s all there ever is.
But sometimes, when the lights pulse along your
mirror-black stretches and I’m gliding,
I get a chance to savor it. Even when
it’s daytime, and I’m walking through the crowd, I
remember: under the moonlight we dissolve,
and this is all temporary anyway –
it’s all just motion,
a mindless
joyful
blur.

 

 

 

© 2025. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-ND.

Playlist: Vapor Trails

Poem: When you tell me to brush my tangled hair

When you tell me to brush my tangled hair

I say,

Nature evolved hair, not brush,

but it did leave those patches of grass

brambling down the backs of

the paths I ran along, fleet-footed the way

all children are, wind-swept

to our next rapture.

When you aren’t looking, I learn 

to slake my own thirst. 

Like the water-striders

in our pond, I traced a razor’s edge

suspended between girl and woman:

no light to bring me up,

no dark to pull me down.

I tried to see the new horizon through animal eyes.

The strange slits of the goat-eyes helped me see

through fences, across pastures; the black inscrutable orb

of the horse-eye drew me in.

You tell me,

        Beware the wolves with unchecked fingers

        that ripple down your spine,

And you should know

I couldn’t avoid them completely.

But in the countryside there is room to grow,

so I grew the way the wildflowers did.

Neural roots surged through the soil of my mind,

and I grew vast and gentle.

And if you asked me who my friends were

I’d say,

I am the friend of knee-deep mud after a long drought,

the parched earth drinking again.

I am the friend of rust and barbed-wire, lightning that blackens oak,

the twitch of a horse’s tail and the heavy power of its hooves.

And if you speak of conformity, you should know

I won’t listen.

Yes, I still keep my hair messy like a child’s;
I still run breathless from one splendor to the next.

I still drink it in wide-eyed, unblinking
so I might slake my unceasing thirst

with only the tears that fall

from my open eyes.

 

You say,

    Complacence brings a comfort of its own.

And it’s true: in my third act I will give myself to the soft

sting of twilight, the clicking of stones

and murmur of water. I will straddle heaven
and earth, its strata and firmaments,
but for now:

My world is a private wilderness of my own creation. I will not brush my hair.

 

 

 

© 2025. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-ND.

Poem: Leonard

I feel your vibrating throat, your fur parting around my fingertips, the waxy bristles of your whiskers. Your eyes close. Your eyes open, and I see that they have become two lapping dark pools of love.

You are not the kitten who tumbled into my headlights like a paper lantern on a rainy night. You are not that kitten, but you purr like him, and I know he's still there. To me you stepped out of a dream, singular and fragile as a trembling white petal. Nature’s softest and most hopeful prayer, that's what you were: a kitten. That's what you were, and that's how I found you. Your eyes were two glass orbs, so shiny they looked warm to the touch, shiny in the way brand-new things are, shining in a way that cracked me open.

In the world there is darkness. There is darkness so complete that it squeezes you until you’re a crumpled jagged husk. There is also impersonal darkness, the kind responsible for the churning guts of nature, the kind that makes the kitten suffer or the owl starve.

Leonard, my Lenny: I can protect you from the crushing talons. I will shelter you from the hardness of this world. For me, you will smooth its jagged edges and sweeten its bitter tastes. The milky smell of your fur spills like sunlight through my window and I am aglow, you have set me aglow. I think you and I have answered some secret prayer. Yes, to see a creature made vulnerable to you, and to meet its eyes with love: Leonard, you have shown me true power.

This short prose piece is about my cat Leonard, click here to see a picture of him :)

 

© 2025. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC-ND.