prayers

for every car i see, i say i prayer
peering through snow melting to slush
on my goggles

i've bolted out of churches all my life
my skin tingling with anxieties
rolling my eyes skyward

so i don't know what it means
to """say a prayer"""

but this is what i mean when i say it:

"please don't run me over please don't run me over please don't run me over
please don't run me over please don't run me over please don't run me over"

so maybe it's not a "prayer"
just a plea

Permalink
24 January 2019 09:37

winter again

the road unfurls from my front wheel like a wet, black tongue, lashing between snowed-over yards and cutting a path through a tunnel of trees. i dare to pedal harder, smashing knobbly rubber through the not-yet-ice as gravity drags me downhill.

and yet as i fly, my legs rattle above the pedals from the wind cutting straight through muscle. the faster i move, the colder i am.

and i know i'll be warm again shortly.

Permalink
05 December 2018 09:32

winter waning

the valleys that run east-west will show you which side faces the sun more often. the creek draws a dividing line; dark and wet on the slope that's a shady south, and grey and glowing where it faces north. the south slopes are where you smell the musk of bedding animals, the rot of early spring, the press of urgent sprouts; on the north slopes, water occasionally drips.

globs of snow still hang in some trees, like sloughing nests about to slip to the ground. a branch occasionally springs up, a startling motion, freed from the burden of crystalline moisture.

i can't tell if i'm cold or warm on days like this.

Permalink
25 March 2018 17:28

train your feet

i don't have to ask my ankles to respond; i trust that they will, on their own. by the time my shoes have lost traction on a tiny patch of ice, it's too late for me to think about it, anyway.

i do have control over my general trajectory, though. i know that i can typically get better traction on snow, punching past the surface and landing in slush below. where it's not icy, it's muddy. dark pavement is hard to judge this close to sunset; i can't tell for sure if it's wet or frozen.

even the dogs are slowly picking their way through.

Permalink
22 March 2018 22:53

snowpack

i woke to a strange silence.

last night, the sky glowed dusty pink, the color of a snowstorm at night.

each tree branch sprawls black against a blank sky, building a stack of snow that mirrors its shape. each tree is a double-tree; one of wet wood and a second of supported ice.

the snow muffles movement.

Permalink
21 March 2018 22:08