The Catch

Language and looking.

Even the so-called visible is hard to see, like one of those creatures abundant only in captivity, for whom a return to the wild means likely death. All my best attempts at sense-making amount to a series of interruptions and asides. Some say it was different once, but I wouldn’t know.

Having no access to that other once, I run along this seawall by flickering glance and jagged line, between the dream and whatever this is. Now a blurred portrait, then a caped figure from behind, silhouette dissolving in a field, and what can follow any of these but another exception?

There is no paradise until you lose it––or the key, so now I play locksmith with these filaments of letters borrowed from lines of blue swallows against sky and skaters’ blades on frozen ponds. I am looking for a clue to help me mourn this thing before me, writhing in a net. I do not know its name.

Updraft

Passenger notes at dawn.

An atmospheric river pours dreams through the night, drenching our words and pooling at our feet. One takes us in its boat, drops us, picks us up again, evades us in its thrall and escapes upon waking. We spend so much of each ride asking how it will end, and will it? And what if it won’t? Until we end up beginning again.

When the end escapes us, where are we? Climbing through spirals of remembrance, children at a playground, one and another occasionally stuck, fallen, left out, carried away. The arrangement shifts constantly, like mountain weather.

From here, we cut swaths of sky for new wings. Once lifted, we rain intentions into our shadows, raising the tides against the impact of the next one to drop from these clouds.