Writing Spaces: Reading

 

Reading, like tracing

fossils, ancient marine life

in white chalk cliffs,

remains or impressions

of thoughts and dreams

cast into immutable form.

Like stone maybe, but

always giving, carrying

forwards and back.

Fluent in voice and time.

 

 

image:  Blanche-Augustine Camus, woman reading

Color Diary: Turquoise Sequin

 

TURQUOISE SEQUIN

 

Tricky to catch, one of those fugitive colors

which won’t stay fixed.  Equivocal, elusive,

inconclusive, evanescent, multifaceted, 

needing an uncertainly certain angle 

of sunlight just so, on its six—seven—

gently slanted planes, 

the shallow saucer of its surface,

the glimmer and glint of it, miniature 

disk, discus, some ancient votive offering

to Zeus, or tiny sacred pool.

Set off by crystals and gemstones

and the soft-textured tile,

the sequin found on the carpet

next to the table leg while 

taking the Christmas tree down,

like the evasive slipper Cinderella lost

fleeing the ball, returning 

to reality from brightness,

to the humdrum after the drumroll.

Color Diary: Lichen Green

LICHEN GREEN 

lichens

on bark, stone, henge—

whether before the pastures 

on the path to the ocean

or in the realm of 

the ancient Alpine storm gods,

inhabiting 

a place of crossing, 

a passage or boundary or wall,

the sanctum

of the hoary apple tree goddess

just past the laundry, kitchens, 

where soup and earthy bread

are shared with all comers

images:  Maelmin Henge, Northumbria

 

On the Bookshelf

On the bookshelf,

Shorebirds

Santi

and Sherlock Holmes—

three guides


into the unknown

and then

the flopeared flannel rabbit

my painted teacup

the terracotta artist pen

to see me safely through

another day

—Christie

February Inklings

a flooded field

planted with white egrets

________

the Pescadero market

with artichoke sausages,

olallieberry jam,

a carton of duck eggs

________

ragged huddles of Christmas trees

in February coastal fields

like highschool students

hanging out together after school

awkward and yet to find themselves

________

a visit to the tea and rug shop

with smoky garnet kilims

to buy a paper packet of

Ancient Beauty oolong

________

a white horse

in a winter field

________

Nebbio winery,

grapes ghosted with fog

________

the sign for carnivorous plants

at one of the roadside nurseries

snapping up customers

________

hand-lettered signs

for local honeycomb,

strawberries, artichokes

________

driving up the coast from Pescadero

to Pomponio to Half Moon Bay

the fields are all impossibly yellow

between ocean and highway,

highway and distant sky, Van Gogh

let loose with an enormous paintbrush

________

the little market at the bottom

of the winding road to Half Moon Bay

offers as it has all the years I can remember

fresh sandwiches and bait & tackle (though

I see the roasted peanuts are now gone),

and today in addition, laid out by the open door,

bright-striped sarapes and a painting of Jesus

—Christie

Inklings for the First Weekend in September

on the back road

a swaybacked chestnut mare

being led trustingly

into September

hanging out together

on the clothesline in a late

dapple of sun, a gathering

of t-shirts (or whatever

the collective noun)—

three pink, one gray

some headed back to school

and others leaving work

after thirty-six years,

this last Tuesday of summer

as if another tide

has turned, the light

withdrawing now

from the long slip of sand

where we have walked

these months, as if

not to return

—Christie