AllTold: Life is Storied
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Tellings
Divination
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The grace of the empty
Stopped
Now with the roof
The wind shakes
The sun finds the dun world
The wet mosses
The small birds don't mind
There is wind in the hemlock
The day smells of leaf wet,
There is a leaning
In the aftermath brightness
Still and again
The early rain hits harder
A mist now rises
The roses are ripe
The dogs never bother
Not the pink of the petals
A river-flow of shadow
There is grey in the waiting,
The dogwood goes creamy
Because the rain—
Here, at the bottom
Nothing moves
Nothing to see here.
The shadows the leaves make
A kindness of leaf-fall.
The cloud flows
A brush of winter trees
Hard to see
Even now
All night the wind
Under a faultless sky
All the laughter
Dead bird like a warning
The grey of home.
From where I sit
A mist gauzes the trees.
A sweet chill aftermath.
The grey of the wet.
June bugs stud
One deer steps out
The birds are busy,
The woodpecker in his
The chickadee samples
Wet dims the distance.
the dim settles
The heat is in the glisten
The heat is in the elbows
The gift of catching sight
In the bright and early
Blue dragonfly
The dogs startle
Small brown rabbit
A hooting hullabaloo
Walking through the scent
The dogs in the doorway
The day is backlit,
In the great stillness
The only sign of wind
There is a whirring
A fracas of roses
The wind keeps walking the sun
Speechless
Crow in the pear tree
Sunlight and song.
Small brown birds
The flower falls
In the night the patter
After a dry morning
Bee heavy
The light is in the green
The bluster is in the bush
Small birds fly up.
Branch shadows recline
The rain has stopped.
A thin glazed clarity.
The wind moves
After all that
The fog hides
A flock of rearranging
The tick tick tick of
Moonless.
Everyone everywhere
There is the fog. We
Old leaves like small birds
The overcast
The damp is sweet
The sound as of wind,
The sky wears
The soft of the grey
The fright of a cat.
The grey is in the wind
The effort of engines,
A chorus of crows. The
The beak of the wren,
The sun makes a blade
Everywhere through
The mild forgives
The mockingbird breakfasts
The rain comes in small waves
The cold is a crease
There are daffodils
A pair of crows
In this season of deepest
The stern of the chill,
A sky the colors of
An emptying out of sky
Because the dogs are sleeping
The spine of the river
All the dark lives
A hard clench of cold.
The white is in the low
The chill is in my fingers
Bright enough and
In this dark other
The dark is white.
The unyielding. Still
The cold is in the white
The gift of unexpected
We fold in and fold in
In the soft damp
The first paling
A shivering in the bush,
Light comes over us
A small wind
A bird that can’t be seen
That bird again
The rain
When it comes it
Nothing falls through this light.
The white press
The stillness of vultures
Frost is on the back field and
A glassy brightness
A bead curtain of wet off
The arrow-shot of a vapor trail
A scattered applause of
Twig lace and leaf dangle.
I am caught by ghosts
The small cloud moves
Press of the cold
The first of it a burnishing.
A pair of crows in the crown
Small shifts of small
The put asunder.
The dog star catches
As if light were a drink.
The rain wants
Grey bird on a brown fence,
The moon blackens
See how all the red of the world, the
One window light
Sometimes the sameness
The leaf-fall a pulsing,
It is cold. Nothing
The burn of the cold
Unnoticed and undisturbed.
A blush comes over
The stars, unnamed,
Here is the paling
The dark thins to a blade edge
A shiver rain of leaf fall.
Having feasted
The day is grey and
Before the sun the
After the rain a spider
Always
The leaves on the ground
A grey underwater day. A light
The shelter of angles.
A startlement of chickadee.
The wet fogs the view
Already it’s late
The heat comes on.
The instinct to hunt.
Easy enough, the
All the blue confrontation
The after-shine
The grey is in the grass
A pair of leaves tumble
One by one the birds
An outbreak of roses.
The bush fills
Into the darkness
A thunderous reckoning.
The morning chill
Through it all the dog
Moonlight whites the wall.
Bird fight like star light,
Darkness sifts
The day’s heat gets
Still.
The crisping of
The rattle in the leaves
The ragged stems
After the rain and
The little bird keeps
After a beat, it begins
The narrow bird,
Steam breathed off
A burning blue and birds
Again this morning
All the small fallen
The call of a small bird
The hush of the falling.
Fallen into orange
The river flow of
A hurried feed.
The light of home,
The hiss of the incessant.
The never quiet
Too bright to
One small grey bird
The busyness of birds.
The early glower
Under the arching overhang
A flocking of sparrows.
A flurry of finches
The backs
The hunger of birds.
In the stillness
The grey and the green
The lizard’s green exposure
The early is loud
A blanketing dim.
The closing curtain
Flies in the bush
The sweet soft scent of green,
A folding in. This
Green heat
Wren glorious
No effort is expended
After such a timeless
White irises rise
Something burning
Morning troubles the maple,
Bright enough
Petal-worn and
Grey and pollen-
Grey and green and easy,
Sunrise gilds the middle window
The green that lamps
The azalea is all lipstick
This window of light
How everything yields
The small of a bird.
The chase of a snake.
The storm called out
The cup of white tulips.
Shadows animate
Overhead the spread wings
A ruffling bluster
in the dim
Bland and bitter bright.
A faultless sky.
Halfway up the stair
A surprise spill
The chill dims the distance
There is bright
The curve of the waiting.
Bright and dry.
Colorless and
Chill and dripping.
A persistent
The dog runs
Warmth comes through
The chatter of birds
A surge of motion
A fist of blue through
Birds stitch the leafless
Wet and shadowless
Wind blows the birds around
The hard knot
There is dim
A dissolving sort of
A tremble in the green.
And still the lean
Cold blinds the glass,
A gaggle of jays
As if nothing
The dog leans
Everything is collapsed
Rain again, mossing
In the dim,
A bitter sort of empty,
Still the grey
An obscuration of distance,
Featureless and dripping,
Birds in the dim,
Rain shivers the bush
Bright with an edge
A grey lingering.
The cold crisps
Light slants through
It is cold and the dogs
The feather heaps
Bright moon in a pale
Buds of late roses
The scissor song
Luxuriant rainlight.
The light has come loose
A vacancy. Small
So bright and so
The green waits.
The rusty fatigue
This bright and berried.
An aftershock of grey.
A sheltering of black birds.
Sky-rinsed and leaf
Horizontal birds
Blunted again, the
Cool enough to rest in.
An uneasiness of dogs.
The kindness of overcast.
A flurry at the feeder,
A scouring of crickets.
Today, leaves like petals
The start disguised
Nothing lives here but a kind of velvet.
A bland shadowless.
The press of wet
Rainlight and chickadee.
The toad is dead, is
The tremble in the green
Early bright
Still, the holly wants
In peripheral motion
The bloomings continue.
Rain falling from sunlight.
A green suffusion.
A vacancy, bathed in breeze and birdsong.
A gathering heat,
Now everything is swimming.
A dull softness.
Lifting up from under.
A scuffle of wrens.
Nothing stirs the bush.
Spray of wingbeats.
Windy with rain.
Every green edge
Bird bothered and
Songbath
Sparrow tongue
The damp of the wait.
The sky holds
Lady bugs climb the flowering
I see now there are
The branch breaks
Grey bird in the branches.
Wind bursts the seams
This lullaby grey
The tremble that rises
Yellow light
A dazzle at the glass.
Shadow cat in the long
The wet washes everything
The grey meets the wet.
The cold burns.
Cold now.
The pale stands
The edge and demand.
Chittering. A chipping away
Already there is yellow
Sodden and soft.
The dark is full of teeth.
The light hesitates.
The dark moves
The wet softens
Cold with small
The soft of the dim.
Flat white with bird
Breakable.
Two small birds, three,
Leaf-fall delicate and
An acrobatics of squirrel
The cold is crunchy.
Farther on, a blaze of yellow
The damp is in the distance,
The wet is a light
Then again, rain.
Already blue and
Through the sere
The day is bright.
The chattering
The cold is in the bones.
The branch inside the color
Still. And we
The grey of fading.
Too white for stars,
Into the once again
Fly spawn. A dry
In the dappled, a fall of yellow.
Small birds rise
The press of the heat to come.
The chirrup in the dimming.
How soft
The yellow roses
The petals brown
Softly glowering, the
There has been rain.
Bright edged and shadowful.
The fierce pales from the petals,
A pause in the rain,
Day comes into the wet.
A naggary of chirping.
This bleeding bush
She brings me a walnut.
Sky as white as walls.
This delicate pause
Not cold.
Through the dim and the damp
The day comes wrapped in cotton
The rain is white.
Damp shivers the bush,
Clouds hide the stars.
A chuckle of rain,
Mild and lapping.
The mild is underfoot.
It is dark.
The sleep of not sleeping.
The grate is hot. The sky is vacant.
I am not cold, but I am.
The moon and the vapor trail and
There is no shadow.
At first I thought I might love
Cold and coppering.
There is stone in the leaning.
There is ice in the joinings,
The day gathers.
The sky as tender
With the paling comes
Hull-bellied bird
In the dark of the early
The dog left out
A clarion sky
Soft again today and all
Weather like this, a
Soft again today,
The pale brightens.
A tenderness at the branch tips
The click of a small rain
The stranger’s car hovers
The cold smells of smoke
Sharp and answerless.
Such a clamoring of breath,
The ground wants
The sky gives no opposition.
The bite is in the grass.
The rancorous cloud
The dark is darker
Blue
The bitter has left
There is a wheeze of plumbing
A new clarity, fat
A white distance, close
The basement pump
After the rain
The crow in the lace edge,
One mockingbird sentinel
The tap of rainfall
Everything soft folds
The burnishing, the blush
Snow clings to the edges of things,
Rain on snow, a clattering.
Wet whites the branch tips,
And now the sun
The way the damp
It’s not the sky
The gift of mildness,
Cold and dry.
Hunched.
There is an ambering
The stasis
The rain is cold and
The dogwood understands
There is no moon
The birds sang at first light.
The chill comes in
The bright rests upon
There is a wet
The grey is an aching
And then when the air
The red is in the berry
The return of the sun
There is light broken
A discontent with
There is a waiting
The disappointment
Beyond the wall
A moth brushes against the glass
That yellow
The hum and the buzz.
Disconsolate day. Sky
Featureless undarkening,
Day comes into the trees,
A rare pink morning
The dog must bark
As if we needed
The nag of rain in the night.
Grey again and cool
Leaves in the green gone grey
The grey of the fence
The smell of mouldering
The left-behind trampling
The dripping has stopped. The
We wait for the winds.
They say it is coming.
Tiny white biters that rise
Barking dogs and tiny birds
In light of the dry,
It doesn't matter what you're expecting.
It only seems still dark from inside.
The gleam of web threads
The damp resting.
The morning wants to talk
The dark withdraws lightly
Every day the light comes
A blunted moon.
Thunderous unrain.
Die-off in the leaves.
A mist webs the leaves.
Each dog has her favorite
The little dog buries
What I haven't said
Grasshoppers and slugs
A darkening under the day white.
It is hard to hear past
A gratitude of sleep,
The drip and the curl
Breaking the web with the pane
Heavy rain after lightning.
The promised rain
The click and chortle
Slugs on the stair, slick
The rain an ongoing conversation
The clouds disperse and congeal again.
And so it is. Day again.
Awake in the not yet ready
In all those vines,
There is a compromise
The grey flattens the day
The dogs in their joy
A freshette of wings, that
Flies on their backs
The carcasses of flies
The way the concrete plates the sun.
Hard to say whether
Still grey but denser
Something hisses. The rain
In every hello
The buddha in the flowers,
Yellow comes into the leaves.
A small, pale throated bird.
The counterbalance of rosebuds,
While the houses are still sleeping
The sky is flat, the promised
This kindness of grey
Through the slats
There is invitation
The sound of petal-fall
The waiting pots.
The bladed light.
Yellow cups of roses suspended.
The bright cuts sharp
This bright, this spiderless,
Lightning too far to hear.
Even now, so long after
The sun is on the fence
The blue returns,
The white is in the sky
The old dog sleeps loudly
Early birds shift
Birds on the fence
The grackle walks the path
Small birds on dead branches,
Two robins sparring in the gravel.
The wind is in the shadow
Rain again still
A pair of birds,
Sunlight and flowers.
A dishevelment of green.
A subsiding
A spattering of daffodils
Agitation in the holly.
Birds fly in and out
Still the neighbor's garage
The dripping is more of a shrug
Petal scent and
An easter egg morning
Moss on the bench
The morning shows teeth again
Still the air like music.
In all the mild and milky
Morning mild as milk.
The sky is white.
Not blue. And not gray either.
Rain is coming.
The light is in my eyes
A confusion of morning.
Rain whites the trees.
The cold edge cuts
Cold grays the ground
Twin trees ripe
Into the pink of evening
The door will not close.
In the hall the dogs turn
The unleafed stems of roses
Nuzzling softness.
There is a fog in the yard,
Something has come out
Points of red tell themselves
The day is empty and cold.
Such a clear light
There is spill and shiver,
Too clear to see straight.
Leafless the trees antler
Everything is lit and shimmying.
A punishment of grey,
A clarity of dark
Cold and grey with flashes
The white cat comes hunting,
Everything that was broken
Voices in the night, zealous
Dull distance settles
There is wet on the roof
The mockingbird is outnumbered
The chill slips back
Warm and dripping,
The sky is white. The small
A trio of birds fluster the dogwood,
The cold is at the glass
Mist blows through
I gaze into the tangle of branches
The wet eats distance.
The back lot is spot lit,
Three jays in the dogwood.
All that is glad in light
The restless air
Every corner
The music of light
Impossible to say
It isn't cold,
There are spiders at the window
Who can say
Everything so unexpected
The light steps down
Beside the old garage
A mist damps the distance
The grey hesitates
The shadows of far leaves
The return of clear and bright
The fire pit is holding water.
Behind the shades
The rain in the night
The sun and its forgetting,
A pair of napkins in the grass
The visitor parks across the distance,
The light makes no sound running
The staggering of silver cars.
Their digging unearths snakes,
The hot and shimmering exposure
The fallen stone, this choosing.
The door is swollen stuck, the air
There is a complication
The air seems a solid thing, a resistance.
The answering rain came
For all the cloud talk
With all the flies
The hot light.
Please, someone
There is cold coming from somewhere,
The sun cracks
Last night's rain
Wet and still with green
Outside smells soft.
The sky is pale still with early.
The sky says: Look up!
Well then, perhaps today
The world wants me to look at it,
Snakes sleep in clusters
The sun returns
The swallows anoint my view.
The clouds are breaking
Tiny spider skirts
There was a howling
Gathered in the calm center
The rain gentled the sky, and now
A bit of a blow,
The clattering leaves
No voices other than the leaves,
The bright is in the blue
Warm and indistinct.
Earth worm crossing pavement,
Humming bird at the glass,
Tide pool in a pot hole.
As if wet were breathable.
The wet is in the dripping.
Spiders cross the air.
A nervousness among the leaves.
Yellow light spills over
Bird bodies afoot
The gentleness of overcast.
Watching the dark come,
After the rain
After last night's thrashing
The cardinal in the rampant leafage.
How hard at work the green is.
The flowers wound
Flicks of small
Sips of pink
The insistence of rain
The cat who answers
On the fence
Grey and murmurous
The perfect kiss
The heat that pricked
The rain in the night
Oh!
The rain continues past reckoning,
Green and wet and grey.
Green light and still,
The shiver is in the leaves
Small tremblings
Dogwood petals fall
Not a car in the yard.
Wind breaks and scatters
Every day there are more
The wet smoothes the sounds
The grey and green
We wait for the promised warmth.
The smell of wet
Birds keep bursting out of treetops
There is some talk
The night air
Small birds
There are spikes
Through the still
Cardinal in the grass
The grey remembers
It’s not as if there’s nothing to see.
Something grim about the leaves,
The sky has already
The rain makes everything slow
Through the brown and the wet,
The rain comes
Morning breaks like smoke on glass.
Brown birds
The red dog teaches
Bird feet on ice branch
The birds in the trees
A darkness
There are no edges
There is light in the ground.
The cloud breaks and mends
Still the air is smoky white
The day is like a postcard of a place
All the tiny lights
The cold stars the leaf-fall.
The way the river
Snow decorates the gusting
Surely something somewhere is burning.
It's not raining anymore.
Warm as the breath of a sleeping bear.
Crows in the leaf blow.
Nothing moves out there.
Standing in the warm spot
No birds in the chill. No leaves.
Nothing rises.
The soft is in the yard.
Dead oak leaves
A white suspension.
The jays are in the holly and
Turning out under the holy moon.
Into the hour of black and gold
A spray of speeding birds
Two birds cross the blue,
The wind seems like something
A passing ruckus of birds.
The chill makes sleepers of us.
The flies subside
The wind in the trees
Somewhere out in the new chill
No weather at all for days.
Little birds spark the leaves
The light comes in
This house is porous
The cloud bank lends
Butterflies
Black birds fruit the oak and swoop
Beyond the small light
The bird sings
Motionless.
The dogs fall at my feet
Rising to the dog star
The dogs ask with their whole bodies,
Concrete scrapes the grassy edge.
I am still waiting
After the rain what
At last, a stirring in the leaves.
Nothing stirs, no bird or lizard
I look down. I know that I should
Nothing moves through the air
Wet.
Even now
There's a chill to the early
The azalea crawls with hungers.
When I go out, I come back bitten.
And here it is, the white of day.
Sauce blown from the tailgate bbq
The scream of the coyote
Great billows and flows
Open the window
Held in. Sheltered
The blue start slips
Breathless.
How everything that broke
There were stars and a sliver
Before color even
Somewhere underground
This is the fire season's
I look for myself reflected.
That blue owes me nothing.
The sun is a heavy blade
The flowers in the pot
Heat pools on the sill
The horned moon
While the air is still
The small birds are back
There are walls and there
How glossy the green with day
Cicada rattle,
The early smells petaled,
A bug that looks like a hair clip
It's nothing to me
Morning smokes the treeline.
Beetles buzz the lawn,
The mist keeps begging forgiveness,
The long wait. The
How do I speak it
Still and all, the light comes
The sun is on the ground.
The neighbor boys stand beside the car
The dirt's gone grey
The sun is so bright
Three bikes in the yard.
The wind rises.
In the formless leaning
Dark wings folding into the green.
The visiting dogs go
The cushion of heat
Birdsong in the bush,
Birdsong under white sky.
I did not hear the rain
Before the sun has fully
The storm that happend
It's not the sky's fault
The storm is everywhere
The vacancy
The shade of shelter, this
The leaves make starlight
The ferns are a foment
Birds at the train station.
Asphalt and a smattering
An oracle of leaf-fall
Already the heat.
There is movement in the small
The light declares transparency.
After the day,
Tree shadows have been
The light that's in
The sun comes out.
All the birds are high and far
Crawly things abound
The neighbor's dog
Shadows darting
Coming in slantwise
Dry feet coming in
In this light
Rain pools on the grey roof.
The little one comes out dancing,
The boy on the red bike
The rain comes
The longing of a small cat
A flatness
At the last minute
Sweet vine twining
A small bird, brown
The night's wet steams from the roof.
A skinny black cat with one white paw
Steam rises from the tub.
In the old leaves
Clouds slow the dawning,
An agitation
Overcast
Shades pulled down.
Clear and cool and bright.
Rain on the lawn
Grey over brown
Chill on bare skin, the
The smiling combination
The singular bright stalk of unnamable
The black dog's
Two birds fall together
I leave the door open
Last year's parsley
The red dog leaps straight up
Primrose pink in a froth of weed.
The black dog goes all fierce
The last of the rain
The little dog
There is a swiftness in the leaves
There is clover in the grass.
The light promises more rain again today.
The press of change,
The rain that might come later
A beer can washed up on the porch,
This patience.
The grey smells of petals,
Vultures live in the trees
A pair of goldfinches
A mosquito
Breeze and sun and
Yesterday's bone-throbbing
Dogs cry to be let in
A kindness of rain.
A sinking back to grey,
The brash certainty of blue
The weeds are in flower.
Still private in this corner
Daylight crafts a hollowness
Over the sill and all its glass
The woman in the red jacket
The will to persist
The light finds the white
The wet is in everything
Shadowless and vague
An afterthought of petal-fall
Clear and chill, this
The far oak is almost yellow
Last night's wind
The overcast breaks. The day
A shimmer on the backside of the pear.
The azalea is equally
What March didn't green or flower,
The green is brash against the blue.
Rain brights the green
A stormy un-light beyond the green.
Overcast. The smallest
Waxwings in the holly.
I find no solace
Still submerged.
There is sun and
The old dog leans into the jessamine
An impatience with discussion.
Pear blossom confetti.
The white cat cuts across
The wet is sharp, refracting.
I cannot see the birds
Overcast.
There are creatures crawling
There is a stillness on the grass,
Azalea skirts unfurl.
The sun stretches itself out
The air is white with the memory
The redbud in the backwood
A bland untidiness. Dandelion
Green coming in like beard stubble
A tenderness of waiting
The smallest breath of green
One mocking bird
The birds lift and drop
Vapor trails converging
The tick-tock-ticking
There is a meanness to the green
Thin cloud puckered
A crow in the early.
All the bells are ringing
The shadows are symphonic
The patience of the winter pots.
The sun is on the holly
Shoreless
The breath of the clock.
Old leaves shivering in old webs.
Wet and warming with
The window is closed.
A fabric of birdsong
Brown birds in the brown leaves
He says where they are
The path in the grass,
I keep rushing ahead
There is forgiveness to the damp.
The rain has chased the chill.
It's not so much that light comes
The already begun pace
I rest my head on the window frame.
How white the brightening is.
The shadow of the forward pot
Light comes in over the ground
In the leaf fall
I turn to look
A timeless white
The sun has crested the trees
Clear and pale with trembling
The light caught in the vase belly
Into the gengle
How soft and edgeless
One bird song repeating
It's January and the mice
This hiss of it falling
Black is in the trees
The cold gets up inside things,
The ground is grey and crunchy,
After the rain the clouds lie
The wind is in the trees,
There is wet in the prospect,
The stuff of my days accumulates
Bright star in the dawn branches.
The heat blows cold
The little dog turns
Cold and cut by the little dog's
The sky is broken open
Gray again. And the ever present
A pair of shoes left out
The day could lead anywhere,
The bright is so cold it cuts,
The moon is in the willow oak, and the day
A ringing of bells
The red dog stands luminous
The yard is thick with haze
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