christmas eve

the best party of my holiday was driving up the canyon in the afternoon, building a fire on the snow and watching the light change as it became evening.





there is something about having less of something that makes it more beautiful...I think this is true of sunlight in the winter.












the chef, and his Christmas Eve menu...on the way back home, he jumped out of the truck, grabbed my old metal-runnered sled and flew down the road for about half a mile- I could barely keep up with him in the truck.

aven e. - 15 months old

A lot of these picture are blurry and out of focus...but they capture so much of her. I really couldn't narrow it down any further...
























love love love love love this girl

five minute poem/s

#5
The trees are bare again, after days
of warmer skies, tracks soften and
refreeze into rigid records of our

days spent slow-stepping along narrow
trails through the windbreak. Sign of
rabbit, pheasant, a scattered bouquet

of feathers from some small bird.
We gather. A pinecone, a fan
of juniper needles, bird nest

blown down from its crook;
the delicate dried mud
cracks open leaving no trace

of the place that
once held those brittle
bodies before they learned flight.




#7
Like some trick, the sharpness
of white sunlight on our sheets
as they move just a little

on the line, brings me
suddenly back
to my mother’s phone call
from the island this morning –
of her voice telling me the reefs

are suddenly dying; bleached pale
as bone. The sheets lap
like lazy currents, and I think

of your body suspended above
that water, of the lengths
of unbreathable
blue between us.


Aven fell asleep on the way back from the mailbox the other day...and I remembered her fallling asleep in the sled last year when she was still such a tiny baby, bundled like crazy, lying on her back as I pulled her over the snow...


#6
As much as the ragged silhouette
of the tobacco root mountains, or
the bleached fields with their easy sway

of wheat stubble, the wind is an element
of our view. Breath stealing pull
and twist of air, the land itself;

from lichen covered stone-face,
to the sudden, unexpected fold
of sheltered draw, sighs

around your bare face, pinks
your hands, makes you grateful to catch
a lungful
of such wide wild air.

* * *

We're preparing for Christmas, which I am actually ridiculously excited for...



As you can see, we're practicing peace...



except when it come to your little sister who want to play with your toy...

dress rehersal

five minute poem/s

I'm starting a new project here on the ole blog.

Once upon a time in my life I wrote poetry...quite a bit of it...even an entire thesis-sized quantity of it. And lately (oh, the last six years) I have not written much at all. Poetry can be an easy thing to put on your back burner when there are other urgent needs in front of you (Mama, I am extremely starving right NOW!)



So I've been giving some thought to simplifying, reprioritizing, all those lovely shake-it-up words, and I've given myself a poetry challenge. And nothing makes a challenge harder to give up on than sharing it with other people, right?

My challenge is the five minute poem. My usual answer to have you been writing lately is that I just don't have time. But I can usually find five minutes. So the deal is that I time myself for 5 minutes only, writing like mad...or not...depending on how it all comes. And I have to make time for this EVERY DAY...for a year...that's the plan...

And I plan to share them here...for your reading enjoyment :)

And I will throw some photographs in, too, because I can't stop taking them.

As of today, I am four days in.



So here are the first four...more to come...


Five Minute poem #4
12.8.10

Hours after you’ve gone to sleep,
I still feel the delicate bones

beneath your shirt. Your exact
weight and length across

my arm as you give in
to sleep are things I know

from watching birds in flight, or
considering a whistle made

of the lightest bone, a sweet
sound comes from the middle.

This morning, a friend held her new daughter
for the first time. I cannot tell

what I feel for her, for every
woman who learns that weight,

that heartbreaking lightness
of a child. Goodnight,
little sparrow.




Five Minute Poem #3
12.7.10

This morning as I left for town,
wheels pushing through heavy
new snow; the sky opened,

licked clean its icy blue, opened
wide for a low and serious sun.
And who am I to rush

those eight miles, rush the morning
as the sun crisps golden the edge
of every cold and shimmering thing for miles.

I do not know what to make of myself
in the face of such a morning.

I do know that I stopped the car
and breathed it in, and felt, a bit
at home here on this planet.


Five Minute Poem #2
12.6.10

The dance studio floor is
wet with footprints, snow
dampened boots tipped over

and left beneath the chairs for waiting parents;
a row of girls reach for each
other’s hands, watching the opposite

of each move in the mirrors.
I’ve been walking
the slick downtown streets

in fresh snow; thick white sky
shouldered low on the mountains,
sidewalks, roads all the same-

then the sudden warmth of wood floors,
the echoed tinny music, and my blond
girl, hurrying to me, saying mama, mama



Five Minute Poem #1
12.5.10

Coming home after dark, after
dinner, the air shimmers with our headlights,
a perfect 8 degrees. On either side

of the empty dirt road, drifts as graceful
as any other movement, as any ocean wave
making its languid way toward shore,

and we sip the last of the vodka
made weak with melted ice
from a wide mouthed mason jar

and drive quietly, our bodies
shifting even before we come
to the wide dips and sways

of the frozen road. It is too dark,
to see, but we know
the hills rise and fall

a little at a time
in all directions
around us.

portraits of fall

outside:


































inside: