the sun moves in the blue sky, time performs its duty

(little lady long lonesome day/sept 12 2022)

my window unit hisses groans whines tonight. two darknesses sandwiched against each other. i feel myself going away from myself and try to focus on the moon.

i am bobbing in a palette of shade. my life seems so far away. earlier, grey asphalt spooled up beneath my bike wheel. i cut an oscillating path down to campus and back, then back and back.

cryin dreams of kneeling down bfore the stilled pool into which falls lick creek from that break in the rust-stained rockroof. 

shining boulders they sneer before me

one parched creek bed to my self

this valley is a closet

this valley is an iron maiden

this valley is a cask lined with salt

barren like the amargosa barren like a dust bowl bitter girl

ac screaming hangnails bleeding. natalie im sorry i startled you coming back to camp from a smoke when the air was sweet and heavy with the sagebrush summer night. the pulsing hand. what i can never say and what i cant convey

(feb 25, 2022)

i play games of numbers with myself, like how many pages can i read today, how many days will i make my 20-some-odd spirits last, how can i pass the time til the days, or more simply weeks dwindle down from 4-3-2-1 then zero

i am listening to a playlist i made in may of 2019. i remember driving down meadow in my subaru, i am weaving the outback through the lane, cars on either side of the tight neighborhood, houses new and old, our house on the hill. we assign meaning to places--so many tenants, how many different meanings?

(feb 27, 2022)

early morning watched the first of the day's light kiss the tops of the hills beyond our campsite. i may hike up there today, since the work truck's out of whack. last night a tire blew right at the gates and we hiked up the rest the way to camp under the screen of stars, passed skittering coyotes, striding up the switchback

2:49 back at my smoke spot. days passing slowly. saw those little birds again as i come up to the water tank, theyre children laughing "cheep-cheep" as they flit to perch atop stalks of century plants. the strange desiccated plant shimmies as they land and take flight again, only to hop upon a nearby stalk.

its warm up here. a long-stalked, weedy stem ends in a yellow flower bud and bobs lazily in the breeze. lazy like these days at camp, where i sit in the sun, return to the shade, read, hide in the truck, perform some variation of this pattern as the sun moves in the blue sky and time performs its duty.