"The Path Of Least Resistance Is What Makes The River Crooked"
So exciting to share the woods, turn a lonely trail into a romantic one, have raspberry white chocolate pancakes instead of a cliff bar for breakfast, or to wake up in a tent beside hot coals, so exciting to share the woods, to loaf and be idle, together.
Before Leaving For The Greeley’s
soon I will know who I am
soon I will crunch through snow
measure myself in the distance behind me sinking
boot and breath into the spine of who
soon I will discover was my former self
lost like the river frozen beneath
yet becoming
becoming roads
that lead to languages I have never dreamed
roads that are themselves bridges that betray
neither what they conceal or where they lead
bridges that trestle two inconceivable sources
just as it carries me off
so do I
carry it along
the two parallel boulevards
that I try to lose myself in
try to lose me
so, it is my choice to sleep there
nothing makes a place more real
as though snoring and waking
on the banks of diverging selves might
keep my knuckles from grinding
across the surface of myself
just as the river files the underbelly of ice
and the ice chisels the trail around it
I too intend to hack out the horror
that might one day be
with a low grit
and a bold boot
me
sitting around
not being noticed
I felt compelled to spend some time
with the drowsy river
make tea and carve the measurement of time
only several cigarettes can afford
to spend alone with it
listen to it’s groaning
about it’s health and that it’s
barely scraping a living from its banks
but yet still it flows
wanted to say goodbye to another October
which has its own obsessive issues bouncing its leg
and wanting to repeat and repeat
at a more frequent pace.
All year long my skin whitened under the burn of going without. -No travel in the most beautiful and aesthetic vehicle I know -no slap of wave against it’s hull -no satin surface to carve with the wood of paddle -no taste of that freedom only a river or lake affords -only obligations and responsibilities ate at any true sense of that freedom
until i went alone
the big boisterous sky ahead
under a hot mid-October sun
on a rocky outcropping
in a Thermarest with
a beer
and a smoke
above the lip of Lake Umbagog
my skin ripening
my legs crossed
the wave against rock
discussing their fears
of the weakening economy
the ignited hills above
gesturing towards the south
its orange airline traffic lights waving
the lone kayak passing by
complimenting the earth on her choice of weather
the tandem canoe in the distance clearly loafing in the sun
the bow adrift in no direction
the sequence skirt of the lake’s surface
showing off her goods
and my eyes when closed
were starry against the bright red
of that smoldering day
hot enough for a swim
When the cold cuts a bleed from the skin there’s no liquor better than the crunch of snow under snowshoe. Bundled and wrapped, the faint flirt of sun fondling eyelids and the hoof of late winter stomping plumes from your throat. Nothing seems more fitting than a cup of tea under its thawing thumb. Cutting trail, shoveling camp, carving kitchen from snow above the silence of ice edging into river and the creak of tree leaning into the swing of a warm hammock.
Crooked Blue Line 
