"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
after so much watching, so much complaining , not dipping my hands. her endless falling, folding over herself, her lanky legs and murmurs overpowered me.
never have I seen water so calm so sarcastic. her sly sneer looking down at me. winter keeping her crooked blue waistline from me, her moods shy and mercurial. never have I climbed her sharp shoulders or brushed cold cheeks and never would I have thought ice climbing would be such a beautiful way to travel by water
we wait on the embankment
in front of tombstones of trees
waiting for the siege of winter
watching the shadows of lanky birches
scar the burnt mountainsides
and the creek cough it’s weak trickle
the footsteps of wind emerging from every corner
Januarys use to be more fertile
use to drop its dress over the
rusted ironwork of branches
by now
Mt Tecumseh would lower it’s staircase to our
two conspiratorial hammocks
strung between two seasons
two falling birds and two twin leashed suns
when finally the library above pushed its books from its shelves
released its white roosters
we pressed on ahead
cut the virgin day in two
composed the most marvelous living music
of ski against snow
crunch against slide
and finally when flanked by night and temperature
a fire rose from the snow
warming a pouch of wine
and toes gnawed on by cold
we retreated to the swing of a hammock
dangling from one season to the next
the chandelier of snow above us mounting
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
“Packing my dry bag, sitting in a broken down camp, gives me anxious uncertainty. Not about the wind or the paddle but about what I am returning to. Theres so much friction in the gears of days, I need to simplify the design. The fewer working parts, the less there is to go wrong.”
“Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world”
“
Crooked Blue Line 
