More recent wall-oems

Note: 'Snyder' refers to poet and writer Gary Snyder. If you've never read him, I suggest you do...

And Snyder's been speaking to me all day, about 'wild' and what it means and how its only voice is ours, stilted with long un-greenness, a young raven calling like a cracked brass bell out across the snow, and there you are in that small town, and here I am in mine, no wilder today than when we first met, talking endlessly of the long way out, sustenance for our mutual loneliness abundant but parched, like crowberries shriveled and dried over winter, like the liquid sieved from the moss.

In seven hours, it's easy to say that one's done nothing, and that we did, winding driving through your favorite canyon, as if we moved through time and space like the stars do, hurtling past one another, stopping finally for black coffee at the diner, where, slowed to our real speed, the snow ceased to slant and fell straight down instead, a white curtain, lines of flakes like bits of data on a screen, dates, times, speed limits, our need to stay together one hour more, overnight, into the next day.

I hurry up and wait: for the ice surrounding the lakes to melt, for the sodden ground to dry, for wild things hibernating to rise and stretch and begin to eat, tearing down the new grass, the blossoms on the willows, the sharp shoots of fireweed that rush up the hillsides. I hurry up and wait: the days are not yet long enough, and the mated pair of eagles, snowy heads and black, black wings, rest hours at a time in the tree across the street. I wait for the hurry to begin, for the frenzy of dinners and drinks and the rush of melting snow, the newborn rivers and streams, the smell of glacier and silt and movement rising out of water that will someday chill, will soon enough freeze, will force us all into slumber, to wait out the perpetual night, wait for the blessed thaw.