It's ended

It's ended.
The place has mostly cleared out.
The gutters are slick with ice,
running still like glacier rivers.
A pall of fog enshrouds us
like God's great frozen breath,
bringing us in-doors where
thermostats control our hearts.
We're the warm-blooded.
Couples trickle off the streets,
clopping shoes across sidewalks,
echoes absorbed in the smoked air.
The wooden walkway
astride the new tower lot
is lit, staggered every six feet,
adorned with college student artwork
and empty.

The few cars drive off, and as their
motors die in the distance
the orange lights hum still,
singing their silent song to
everyone and no one at all.

--- ---

The other night I went late to an open mic poetry reading at the slick Pennyroyal Cafe. I arrived thirteen minutes before it ended, ready with poems printed and in my journal. But it was ending early, and I stayed seated. I wrote this in my journal afterwards. I also drew a picture of a chair.

--- ---

an example of some of that college student artwork--this is the first piece that graced the walkway

Wolf moon

We drifted silently over the hills,
following the dead glare of our headlights.
Sirius and Rigel rotated slowly and swiftly
and the sapphire heavens blazed, lit and soaked
in midnight blue by the full wolf moon.

Sometimes an eastbound car passed us; but no one else
headed west, not in this clear January emptiness,
not through these tired towns and blackened cafes,
abandoned trucks parked on abandoned roads.

Thin layers of icecaked snow coated the distance
over the little summit passes, made it all radiate moonlight
upward, reflective like the quiet rearview mirror.

A long sailing string of light burnt downward, headed west
like us, a fuse firing toward an unknown end.
This common meteor, caused by some unremarkable fragment
of rock, briefly outshined our moon
and illuminated the endless road ahead of us.

--- ---

For Christmas I got a typewriter from Joey and Emily. Joey suggested keeping it in my car so I could be a traveling writer, Jack Kerouac, whenever I wanted to. I took his suggestion. Then on this beautiful January-thaw day I got in my car, rolled the windows down, lugged the old machine like a bulky steel laptop into the front seat with me and began jabbing away at the keys. Just to get anything down, anything at all, because lately I've been less motivated or too busy or whatever and nothing much creative has poured forth from my fingers. So this here's my Wolf moon poem I hammered out, based on our spectacular winter midnight drive across Utah and Idaho and Oregon to Bend for one all-too-brief weekend. The original is cut and pasted in my journal. I retyped it to post here.