The smoke stacks that line the waterfront be like giant joints puffing thoughts of her into air embalmed by hundreds of rainy days
That slow burn, against the icy bay and the barges that carry their loads through them
This corner of the world gets six hours of daylight, tops
Greys seared by neon, smoke and clouds and fog produced as one
continuous substance
There's a pleasant blurryness here
floating amid the buoys and the docked ferryboats,
In the way the monorails glide above toward a 1960s dream of the space age through an Amazonian jungle of glass and cranes
in harmony with the clouds sailing overhead
Here is where you go to let off steam deferred, where you ride trains through a kind of dark that arrives early, stays up late
as shadows wander across the gum covered walls of Post Alley
like ghosts made of espresso mist
freed from lit joints protruding from the skyline
to a high beneath starless heaven
Resting into the glow of that harbor
against thoughts of her that cloud the view of the sea.

The bay is subsumed
By almost thunderstorm
Heather and slate
The sun shines on the pale city
The city shines white
Across the bay
And the ferryboats
Bright dots
Disappear in the devouring rain
Soft from where I stand
But there are spots of light
That play on the hills
And the water
And the land enfolds the bay
Nestling the city on either side
It is beautiful as if from above
And a plane crosses the sky
The churning clouds, white and blue
And vanishes behind the gray

I'm in love with summer.
Standstill air,
dandelions drifting
the weight of the sky
pressing white heat.
Cold, waves beating the shore,
ceaselessly into the past,  
of when I was drowned
in your dreams.

I'm in love with autumn.
Crisp air,
Nudging leaves off gnarly oaks
and tall, regal cedars.
Lost in the anagram of colors,
I see fire,
      I see blood red.
I see a Faustian bargain
            but we won.

I'm in love with winter.
The biting cold in my fingertips,
the solitude of confinement,
walls of windows show snow
that blankets every edge.
And the birds that have left,
to warmer places.
Opportunity, that's what you said.
And your bags, and you,
were gone in the blowing snow.

I'm in love with the spring.
The clear blue waters,
and ferryboats beating against the current,
the gardens bursting into light,
the promise of growth and
of future
and of hope.
but, I guess, we weren't meant to grow old.
And the sight of spring flowers
and trees with bright green buds,
makes me sick to my stomach.

I am in hate with the spring.

The hope I've done something worth remembering
The wish I've written so too
The fear of sins remembered
Dublin ballyhoo

Time is like a line
Time is like an ocean
Time is like a circle
To her:  long distance devotion

Distance avails not
Time avails not so
I'm on the ferryboats
Come with me!  Let's go.

I. Post Alley

Here, darkness isn't the villain.
It's the anti-hero.
We cheer on the absence of light
in favor of insight
- the kind used by blind swordsmen
who distinguish right from wrong moves
by feeling where the fighting spirit
of their adversary sways.
And so we stay awake,
following the signs etched in the neon,
blazing a path toward our fears
with a howl that cuts
the darkness in half like an alley.
We don't dream here.
We embrace the insomnia
like a cup of black coffee
with both hands,
eyes as moons,
tears as tide.

--

II. Olympic Sculpture Park

Every alley finds its way to water.
They all meet their ends
in a view that floods your eyes
at the speed of ferryboats passing.
It's the there and gone of it
that stops us in our tracks.
It's the childlike smile
you may never see again.
Days here
retain an afterglow
that brightens over time
we can't reclaim.

--

III. Alki Beach

I fled here when I thought the world ended.
I ate magically delicious clam chowder
from a paper cup
at the edge of Pier 57,
where a Ferris wheel that no one was riding spun.
Moving became mantra: a prayer put into practice.
So I flew
as far as I could get without crossing an ocean.
The fog I arrived in hid what was gone.
The sub-arctic air was balm
on what was burning up in flames.
Painters believe that lighting
defines what you're looking at, puts objects
as absolute as Mount Rainer in limbo.
I saw the heart differently here:
it was smoke
exhaled from the top of a building
to join the overcast like a freed spirit.
Love wasn't a concrete word,
but a formless mist
that your eyes keep redefining
depending on time of day: the first morning,
it was a cargo ship.
By twilight, it was a one-way ticket
on the Light Rail.
It was something that kept moving.
That's it: everything became far up here,
as if I was looking at it from the top
of a UFO-shaped observatory in a skyline
from the space age.
The sun itself appears removed:
it checks out at 5pm due to the extreme
northern latitude and lets night check in early
like an Airbnb traveler you'll never see.
It's okay to remain anonymously sad and blend
in with the rain.
Locals don't carry umbrellas on purpose.
I'm not okay yet.
So I return often to keep my cool
on their 51 degree summer nights.
Statistically, this is the city with the most single people in it –
soloists, loners, former lovers who understand that oneness is wholeness.
There's healing properties to that.
Up here, nothing is missing.
I'm so far away from what happened
that it becomes invisible,
or at least
lost to the fog that keeps rolling through.

--

Do you see the caricatures neath the full moon pines
The ghost of General McIntosh , spirits of Creek hunters along
the river brush
Old Timers whittling song flutes from bottom cane
Farrier's shoeing mules , work horses straining at the
crack of the whip , ferryboats treading shoals across the
foggy Flint
The voices of children in one room schoolhouses
The rousing , morning bell of little towns , the clap
of field wagons
A fiddler sawing a piedmont 'Rag'
The rustle of picking field peas with Croaker bags

Bring me to Seattle in summertime
I go a-questing the American Sublime

Moonlight, mountain - Skyline, sea
All my relations: Infinity!

Thank you for reading, dear reader
My mind bleeds in words
Night has come again
I don't think she heard

Seattle ferryboats
Rockets to Europa
I do have despair
I mean not much hopa

Licorice tonight
Tacos for lunch tomorrow
The world is sweetly sad
The beauty. The pain. The sorrow.

I'm grateful for the travel
The ferryboats and me

I'm grateful for summer Stockholm
And for the Baltic Sea

I'm grateful for my moment
Yes, I'd like to be

But I fear the coming Night
And how it's Endlessly

                          Not I.
                            We.

There's a lot of hate in America
And a lot of ignorance as well

But there are also Seattle ferryboats
And the bar called Kells

And my brother Ryan
And books in library shelves

Some of them speak secretly
Of holy hidden eleves

Oxford crosses the water
To say: things may go well!

When in Rome
Do as the Romans do

When in Spain
Take the train

When in Seattle
Ride the ferryboats

When in love
Whisper her name!