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When you think the falling finished,
you find it’s just begun.
You changed your face,
leaned back in your chair,
turned over one hand and I was caught.
The effect of gravity —
balanced on the wire between yourself and the world,
and fanning the flame of a disastrous crash.
We put on a good show.
We say what is true,
but behind a facade.
Eyes lowered.
Kicking and stomping where no one can see I get heartsore and I mean sore of heart like a bruise tender to touch and a pulling tide so fierce I look for the rope to break.
So I lie and say what never will be,
because the never already is,
even if only obliquely.
And the cottonwoods are half gone —
at once, as it is with me.
I stopped and started giving it all up.
I stopped and started giving it all away.
We are still closer to the moon than the sun-our-one-true-love.
How you arrived in its final crescendo.
How I followed behind, in the fade.
8.22.17
(81/66, windy)
chickadees. blue heron. sandhill crane. wood ducks and grebes. bluejay. baby bunnies, still. goldenrod’s just about to pop, here. gray and lovely. cool and breezy. a catbird. little group of kingbirds. robins. hummingbird. sun for a second. fuzzy fluffy thistles. raspberries done. ghost in a daydream. indiangrass blooming. goldfinches. walnuts starting to turn. leopard frog. coopers hawk. huh… a woolly bear.
about fieldnotes
fieldnotes was written at the Marsh beginning Sept. 26, 2016 and ending near the same time in the following year, collected in memo books over the course of many rambling walks.
Beginning on Sept. 26, 2019, three years after the writing, fieldnotes will be published in its entirety, with posts appearing as the corresponding write-dates occur.
(at least to the best of my ability)
looking for roots 