summer_jackel

There was tequila in my drink
and there will be
a dog show at 8 am
in a city a couple hours drive from us, that
I don't know well---
screw it. We'll have fun.
The sky is all shades of darkest blue
and the hound cavorting in my living room
slides across the floor, shakes herself
and bares her teeth invitingly.

There is first height, a quality of shade;
an unfurling of ferns, the slow, cool green breath
with woodpeckers' sudden calling.

One morning when the violets bloomed,
I circled the mountain 'round
and met a lady in the forest, running with her hounds.

One was black, the other red,
the third as pale as silver,
and each clear eye as they held me there was bright and gold as the other.

She laughed with a note like a blackbird's call
and moved like air on water;
My heart leaped up like a wounded bird with fear and joy to hear her.

The hounds' teeth flashed like sickle moons
as they cavorted faster:
A question hesitates on your breath, for your own heart speaks its answer.

You have no words, but columbines
and patterns of stone in a river
the secret orchid that blooms in shade and a tender one's love for her hunter.

Should dawn or moonrise sing her call
by storm or shining weather,
I stroke the necks of my three good hounds and we run all out together.

May you find your pack;
May morning sunlight caress your upturned faces
sweet breezes bringing you the scent
of that which you most desire;
May you move together in that hunt, touching shoulders
touching muzzles, running beside each other
like running water, like swift streams, glittering freshets:
May you run swift and clean.
May mountains hold you, may you gather in meadows, in wildflowers
May you recognize each other by the moon's light
May stars find you curled together, deep in stone and earth and warm.

Hey there, anyone who might still be looking at this. Waves at the internet

In short: Livejournal remains the best social media site, so here I am, experimenting with perhaps posting more regularly again. For one thing, NaPoWriMo happens next month, and forcing myself to create something that resembles one poem per day in April is a tradition I've found to be useful discipline, even though personally I'd probably choose October. So there will be poems soon.

The most important thing I want to do right now, however, is to share corpsefairy's exciting Indiegogo campaign. She's opening what is going to be a really fabulous, fun, classy brick-and-mortar bra store on Piedmont Ave. in Oakland, CA, offering garments that fit properly in a way that most available to Americans don't. If you wear a bra, care about anyone who does, or just want to see me wearing a pink bra and talking about how much I generally despise the things, go look (and watch the videos). Seriously, only for Corpsefairy would I appear on the web in a pink bra.

Pink bra or no, I'm never going to be as internet-famous as my little dog, and that is probably a good thing. This Tumblr post, visually describing Coba's bathing sequence has, at time of writing, over 4,000 likes, something that has never happened before. I am highly amused. Coba hopes that this doesn't mean that he gets even more baths.

On the subject of dogs, my pack of three and I continue to adventure. Here's a group shot from a recent walk we shared a vineyard. Sadly out of focus, but I love the touch between Zhava and Coba anyway.

For an offering she gave
one unbidden flash of thought:
you are beautiful, friend plant, you other living thing---
and we hold our breath
as it slides into the ground, requesting transformation;
that the soft roots will continue
that its leaves will double
that a life might continue, given by this ground.

May we thrive, may that
which is most verdant, water-filled and foliaged
within our hearts find place to root and reach,
that we may offer our most tender hue.

These are signs of spring:

Goldfish are coming out of hibernation,
in their deep trough beside my kitchen door. And,
a tiny shrieking toddler yells past on her tricycle
on the street just up the hill.

I find one cute, the other not so much. But still

I hope the toddler and the dude
with the lawnmower-engine-powered bike,
who likes to rocket along said road in similar fashion,
do not meet.

It's good to see you, fish.

Bay laurel, bay laurel, you
have fallen across the creek-bed,
winters ago; three quarters of your roots
are silver curves, gracefully twisting
dead wood. How do you
continue?

Do you see loss or ruin or
a change in reference, of orientation
and angle to the sun?
One deep root lies yet pressed into stone
while living branches have become
new bodies rising above water, with air beneath.
Death may come sooner than it might
but I am living now.

Old Dog was sitting at the crossroads,
lips turning upwards as she
tasted the first words of autumn in
a warm afternoon. She said,
For these good years, we have shared
the old pact; we have been each other's,
and now we stand together in this
place where we have journeyed.
We dogs define the eras of your lives,
but we are timeless. So let us
walk together here, this last little while,
in the long stretch of grass and trees
and the setting sun.

Midsummer is nettles
gilt at noon, light cupped
in a water hyacinth's
parabolic curve,
with fish scales shining under.