More Compass Points 4

Compass

Quality of light not related to quantity. Bluffs with virtually no trees or brush, stacked up to the banks of the river. Two dozen horses have grazed their enclosure into a putting green. At a bend in the road, the river opens up, Mt. Hood, foot to peak, fills up the rearview mirror.

Compass

How wood hole? Shore’s hand. When the world wobbles on its axis, bludgeoned by axes, no one can bend a hand. I west my case.

Compass

Windows dropped, air sucked in moves the door. He figured if he spoke first, that’s all he could do for the other. Once he gets going, he doesn’t pay much attention to his back. If not in concrete, if only in outline, it’s there in stone, chalk on slate.

Compass

It might as well not exist, robin silent on swaying birch. Toddler screeches until his world hears. He planted flowers in spring only to forget in late summer to enjoy the straggling blooms, saddened by the plant’s decline. Some people want their day to end.

Compass

Pulsing man. Sun rises farther south every day. He or she is waiting, a warmer clime: south rhymes with mouth. Gone west, young man, gone west.

Compass

It noises; its noise. Never thought. A lever. He’s framed sunsets between the solstice and equinox, between the roof of one house and a clump of trees.

Compass

Kick me cold upstairs. Thaw, revival, sunrise burning off fog. Much more south than north, almost unembraceable. Then dark, one detail swallowing the many.