PLUPERFECT

Out here in the woods,

my home rests on the hill

where we cut a shelf to make

room for a patio, the house

and ten feet of front yard.

Saturday drizzled in from the

west, and I felt the need for trees

over my head, slid the glass door

open, looked down, and thought,

“I better put something on.”

I headed into the cool and

up the incline in my robe and

slippers, hands out to grab at

saplings and low limbs to

pull myself along.

Everything I ever did had the

same purpose, to just pull

myself along, another step up,

two to the side, find my balance,

breathe, and stop.

Listen, do you hear

the way the wind makes the

leaves simmer soft and easy

under such a smooth caress?

Ah, and the moan when that

Poplar rubs hard along the

trunk of the Siamese Pine

who shares his roots…

Titmice, Sparrows and Chickadees

tickle the air, while an old crone Owl

watches from one of the only two

Persimmons I own. It’s the same tree

where some damn Red Tailed hawk

swooped in last May, and took a pullet

I’d just bought from right under my nose.

Feathers rained and caught dapples of sun

on their way to lie with the rest of the detritus.

I still have a brown one stuck in my hatband.

The air is laden with pebbles of petrichor,

the sounds of life from over Sugar Ridge,

and around a hill or two, bring a distant

dissonance, but I pay it no mind.

I hang my legs over an exposed root

at the top of a slate shelf and the wet

has begun to seep through to my

bare skin; it is cold like a swallow

of iced tea in the summer; I shiver.

I wish it were possible to do this

by design, to decide and make

it happen at will, on my terms,

to know before I leave, that I waited

at exactly the right place, and for

exactly this pluperfect time.

Reviews

[W. Barrett Munn]

You are beginning to remind me of McMurtry's Duane Moore in Duane's Depressed and The Last Picture Show and Texasville, he being one of my all time favorite writers. Sounds like your neck of the woods isn't far from his. Maybe you know Jaycee?
Nice trip through nostalgia for me.

Winston

[Ayvid N]

You live in a very interesting place. I enjoyed the walk and all the myriad of sights and sounds your words brought to me. We are passing only so very briefly through these magic filled woods and so its only right to want to be able to take in all of it that we can before darkness closes in.