bottles of hard cider in the afternoon sun swing orange

streams of light on the hinges of our family reunion and potluck

I’ll follow shaded, Western redcedar spices in the air and get caught

by a fixed-weight, summer hammock woven-memories leader,

Shaded, burnt trees and grey grass marked off

black buzzards of different sizes. I turned my back

I saw the river current of your life run up a creek

and chase the greeting call of a hummingbird.

City crowds can move smoothly as threads through silk.

Buildings rise to heights even light dares to tread. Ask the dead.

Time is a log raft behind a smoking face.

It is a sight around the corner of a river

on a slip-and-fall summer day.

You drove down the driveway,

the tires turning the gravel.

Your heart is scraps of lumber,

splitting mauls, and chicken wire.

I infuse dreams in the land.

They become real when they leave my lungs.

The air becomes more like me.

I become more like dust.

Stories settle into the evergreen

leaves with moss-threaded possibilities.

They layer below the November

There you go again out the front door.

The one you once called your own.

The little blue door on a little winding road

that welcomed you home. Until this morning,

You said the word “no” for the first time today.

You turned down one more sip of milk.

A sentiment you shared without words before in so many wordless ways—

The river we float has a pace

beyond the town’s prepared embrace,

as our untempered souls regale in

the submerged acknowledgments as life

I hear music in the mountains.

I recognize the grip of gravel.

To enchantingly ease and soothe regrets

From the highest past joys lost”