Francesca G. Varela's Blog, page 6
December 5, 2021
Driving the Forest at Night
In the darkness, the air begins to smell of drops of water on fallen needles, and rain pulled densely into moss, startled like glass. Can you hear it, there, the shifting of the old mountains underfoot, slumped by wind and the slow trickle of water, the clay skin, the granite stones, the piles of old sea-beds muddled high–gray, forgotten ancestry? And as the wind blows downward, the dark of their green becomes something that watches you, night guardians who, somehow, you have always known; and you yearn for nights at firesides you have never seen, waking up to the dew and a gray sky that you know will give way to a soft tapping rain, one that will sink into you the same as the perfumed soil, and leave the streaks unbrushed on your forehead, in your eyelashes, like cedar webs, the pulse of the old ways, the ancient heartbeat of the wind sweeping long from the ocean, and the trees calling you, song-circles, cinnamon edges, sinking soils that hold up the world.
November 13, 2021
The Vine Maple
Here we are,
my head rocked back,
your hands
gently unfolded,
soft and creped, and
lit by the sun
like paper lanterns.
Here we are,
combing spider webs
from our hair,
like strings of silt,
like the baleen of whales.
Here we are,
watching the osprey drift,
wings rocking
like the mast of a ship,
our own feet sweetly stuck here,
bathed in earth, in moss, in these, our roots.
Here we are,
you and I,
watching the same sky
turn inward and inward,
a song we never tire of,
you and I, you and I, you and I.
October 30, 2021
Tree Spark
Tree spark,
watching the red-winged blackbird
sail to the east,
its warbling song
like a raven I once heard in the desert.
Tree spark,
do you see me?
Holding my hands up to you,
stringing down your spirit
the way rain falls into a river,
the way moonlight falls in cupped palms
and is drunk
like springwater?
October 19, 2021
The Long Dance
Oak trees
spread like coral in
the long dance
as the crows
watch the edges, as they
paint shadows
over the river
with their wings,
and perch on branches
sponged with lichen,
calling the sun forth
to their feathers.
August 8, 2021
River Light
River light
tuned to the sun
stretched
like pieces of spider silk,
white over the blue shallow water
and glacial pools,
the stones unraveled
and caught in the duck’s beak,
the heron,
the osprey,
the scrape of wings,
the lines on the water,
the intersection
of bug and current
and fallen alder leaves
tumbling the way
snow catches
on a hill,
pumping along the
thread
that ties mountain to sea,
sea to sky,
and the moments of darkness,
the bleached color before, at last, it rises.
July 18, 2021
The Hunter
Photo by Erik Karits on Pexels.comHalf-light,
pulled close around the ferns,
as I wade through dusk swamps of ivy,
walking, rushing,
swatting lace-webbed kingdoms
drawn between cedar tendrils,
down to the base of the creek,
the silver rush of mud and fallen leaves
where the owl watches,
her wings two striped arches
unfolding silently into the air,
an arrow bound for the soil,
for the slick white back,
wet with dew,
of a mouse,
tucked into one talon
and pulled toward the feathers,
the beating warmth and black eyes,
the light slipping darker,
and darker.
June 15, 2021
Between Waves
The cloud sea. Two crows bow to the pink edges. They perch on top of the Douglas firs, where the sun unfolds, seeping through as though salt from the sea. And the clouds move steadily–sloped mountainsides, saturated grey-blue: storms, far hills, still moments between waves.
January 20, 2021
Jupiter and Saturn
We chased the sun,
its red hulked glow dipping into the mountains,
the river running high, and overcast,
spanning out at the place where the hills drift apart,
and we caught the sun, up on the dark curve of a hill,
over a field grown feral with winter stalks of queen-anne’s-lace,
just as the clouds burned a pink line above the hills,
and the grasses bent, golden, in the slow wind,
and, all at once, the light caught up below, pulled beneath,
revealing the first stars, high along the blue,
and we waited longer,
for the orange to fade,
until a single point burned through,
Jupiter and Saturn entangled,
so ancient a dance, not seen in thousands of years,
hovering above our own horizon,
and us, watching in awe, before it faded once again.
January 12, 2021
Storm
There you are,
the feathered edge of the cedar,
black and purple
in this bloom of dark water.
Together we hear
the rush of far-off wind,
the trembling leaves,
the gathered rain,
flowing in small canyons
on the bark,
and with each gust I worry
you might slip over my head
that the flow of water might loosen your roots,
and there is nothing to do
but stare at you the way I stare at stars,
and ask the soil to hold you.
December 20, 2020
Winter Wind
I walk through the forest
on a drifting afternoon,
and the near-solstice light
cuts through the ferns, painting them gold,
painting the air silver,
and I stop to listen
to the single warble
of a hummingbird,
and to breathe
the sun-touched air,
when all at once the trees sway,
the tilting dance, the pre-wind brush back,
before the gust rolls through,
and I stand there, listening to the branches whistle,
the creak of one tree running into another,
the smooth, winter wind,
the wild dance,
the great circle,
as the Douglas firs
catch the wind in their branches,
and bellow, and bellow, and bellow.
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