Coyote Crossing

Thistle, again

How many times have I saved this rabbit’s life? Once by adopting him eight years ago, certainly, less than a week before his “deadline” at the animal shelter. Again a year later, the first time he went into GI stasis and I found him cold as death

Three Announcements

1) In the first hour or so of the year, as Annette and I celebrated at our local gaybar-cum-Chinese restaurant,* I suggested that 2012 is the year in which we should make it legal. She agreed. We are happy. Details regarding the wedding are

Leap

Two weeks ago, lying on my back at 7,400 feet watching the stars peer down at me through a canopy of piñon and juniper, it struck me — once again — that I have been fortunate.

I was in the White Mountains, trying to fall asleep after a day of

Dodging the random beautiful

I have been thinking about love these days.

This is of course nothing new.

Relationships end and they begin, relationships maintain themselves and they wither. These days I am both buoyed by love and burdened by it. The last vestiges of my

Trinity

A draft of this fourteen-sonnet cycle was on the old blog. I took it down and fiddled with it, then submitted it to Camas, the environmental and literary journal of the University of Montana, whose site seems to be down at the moment. It ran in

About love

I have often wondered whether this love for the landscape, this ardent longing I feel for dissolution into the wild is not a symptom of some ancient hurt, a way to salve wounds that should have healed long ago.

I speak of kinship, of the shared

Taos 3

Coyotes sing just outside my window. I awake. It isn’t a dream. The dogs take off after them, singing joyous outrage. The sheep must be protected. Hazel the little goat has broken her leg somehow, and my host will cart her down to the vet in an

Taos 2

The rough wood deck feels good against my thighs, sun-warmed in afternoon. A yellow leaf from a cottonwood lands on my knee. I let it stay. My old workboots look good against the duff. There’s motion across the toe of the left one: an elongated

Taos 1

There were two trees here, once; twin and slender boles straining together toward the light, leaves feeding on sun and their branches broadening. Each bole bore a canopy of heart-shaped leaves brilliant yellow in October. Each canopy turned a

Cargo Cult logic

“You know,” I said to my old friend, “I’ve been thinking.” She was in a better mood than the last time we’d talked. The news had sunk in, I guess, for bad and good, and she was chuckling again, and we were chatting more or less happily. Eight years

Letters from the desert: Raven Moon

Full moon a glint in The Raven’s eye and it drenches us in light. Sable sky bears a feathery sheen upon it. A moon-suffused cool smolder masks the stars.

Joshua trees raise arms toward the pale night sky. The Raven’s shoulder fits beneath my own.