Small Stone, January 7

Today I walked to the gas station wearing track pants, and flats with no socks, and it was too warm even for my sweatshirt, and the flashing sign at the Catholic school said 61 degrees. So why can't I get my head out of winter four years ago, when I couldn't get warm, even with those little heat packs that go in your gloves? When the gate latches froze and the skid steer wouldn't start and the coyote calls got closer to the big warm barn? When I cracked ice on water buckets for horses whose big breath took up my vision so I couldn't see you anywhere?


The door just closed. I get it now. The theme is freeze.

Small Stone, January 6

Every time I crack my knuckles, hunker down into my chair, and get ready to type my small stone for the day, something interrupts me. It's almost as if I

Small Stone, January 5

I wish I could write like this kid:
in five kinds of ink, and backwards in the notebook,
scratching out those silly sixth-grade thoughts
and writing in seventh-grade wisdom.

A line at a time, I would revise myself
into the story of my choosing,
with page after page of promise
and a pen still mostly full of ink.

Small Stone, January 4

This song is:
Rosman Highway in 2007, yellow-paint line, sun burning mist off the mountains, horse waiting in the pasture, friendly crowds of unfamiliar faces, and, through a blanket of grief, a swell of hope.

This song is not:
Medicine, a time machine, the road from there to here, or an answer to the question I can't stop asking.

Small Stone - January 3

Flake-swirls skate across roof tiles,
Fling figures into empty air.
Baby-flakes drift against chimneys,
Skate mini-steps clinging to brick,
Think someday ...

Small Stone - January 2

Frost air bites through fleece,
denim, and twenty-five years.
I am five, on the steps,
looking at my breath.

A River of Stones

1/1/12: Not quite the red plaid blanket I lay on as a kid in the campground. But close.