What precipitation. A tinkling cold that comes down from dark clouds in chips bigger than flakes, glinting like the mica of our nearby hills. Settling into hair like freezer burn, a head not properly wrapped for this weather. Shake then and watch the crystals fall, glinting in the muted daylight. The scrape and trudge of shovels across pavement breaks a silence built of cloud and ground cover. Frozen water wishes us hush. Anon, clear path accomplished, tintinnabulation sparkles alone again. I want to shake the trees.

Wishing everyone easy poops and rosy farts in 2023

They left the car for fifty days; I left my house for months. She makes her cash all kinds of ways, but she ain’t settled once. Stay away long enough, they said, you forget what lonely means. It’s of another structure, built by a broke machine. If the chickadees are chiming in I’m sure they say the same. This head ain’t for equations, but it knows how to stay sane.

Teensy high-heel tracks space wide across the fresh snowfall. Perpendicular, inch long three pronged half steps show that someone took flight here. The first, a bounder determined; the second stepping aimlessly. Someone’s burning juniper again. The moonlight struggles through the covers still waiting their turn. School is delayed two hours tomorrow. I was slow to recollect from my last winter in Maine: the time is for shoveling. I don’t know if my road gets plowed, but I’m ready for some cold weather sweating. After that, my baby’s got brand new snow tires. It is my last week at SWOS until March, and I’m good with it. Delighted to go home and onto other adventures from there. Someone’s burning juniper again, here. I will also look forward to returning.

a kitchen after you’ve cooked: breathtaking. behold, every thing once opened has remained so. some lids are nearby, among leftovers left in view. all drips undabbed, small spills streaked smeared. used utensils lean about leaking leavings. the sink only evidences the same—a chef who barrels on with creation, never stopping for cleaning or clearing the clutter. my full belly fully chuckles at the happy task ahead. house rules: the cook never cleans. and wow, can you make a mess.

also I send love from these two raccoons who just scooted across the driveway in the cold ass nighttime winter out there. The world is alive and wild, and so are we. Let’s trust it.

I am frayed from the tautness of strained senses. My eyes are weakened from looking closely, brow furrowed. I seek silence for my exhausted ears. Muscle and bone, too, are talking quite loudly for my liking, unrelaxed and underutilized. At loose ends my legs refuse to rest, wanting to wander, the mind in hot pursuit. I will pace and wonder and again. Tension leaves too slowly. Growth hurts.

You spent years tilling the soil. Turning it over in scratches and heaps, moving manure. You made ready. There in the black gold you finally lay your precious seeds, then tended them heartily. Water and sunlight and love. When the time came to leave your work to progress on its own, you watched hungrily. Oh, green! Leaves unfurling bright with the promise of plenty. Buds were imminent, you knew, but in your fervor you mistook them for fruit. These small beauties must be left to grow, dear sower. Let them breathe and be. Despite your toil and your time, there is nothing yet to reap. Each season goes slowly. A rhythm only roots can know. A patience to which you now strive. Watch as your care takes hold.

Youth wasn’t wasted on the young, though the body now whines and cries. It would be far too much at once, to exist both wise and lithe.

Deep down my gut rumbled, the thunder resounding through my body up and out in a strident expulsion of air, nearly satisfying, before sputtering out into a meek disturbance. Immediately in the depths again grew a greater grumbling, released of its trappings by the vanguard, creeping up my body then suddenly bursting directly from my gut out my mouth. An emission spectacular and powerful, but not overly forceful. Natural deflation. The best burp.

They’ve got iron clad foundations that all let them off the hook. They met a little dogma and then claimed they wrote the book. The mountain passes change all day: sun and mist and snow. The pikas they don’t hibernate, just putter deep below. If the neighbors’ lights obscure the stars I don’t know what I’ll do. There’s gonna be a full moon soon and I’ve been missing you.

I made a weird camping meal and my stomach is bubbling. You leaned over once when I felt this way, to lift my knee from the bed across my torso. Out came the air and our wild delight. All at once like gusts on a mountaintop, our lungs emptying with laughter as my gut exhaled.

I tried to buy what they were selling but it just ain’t fit me right. Like that story he was telling about the car drove by that night. Here’s a highway, there’s an exit. Share a toke. What’s your sign. You could pray that I’ll forget it but you know your god ain’t mine.

If instead I was everything. Breathing in rhythm with chirping crickets. Stomach like the weather. Each star a window to the wide world below. The distant highway rings, coursing blood. A magpie makes plans. A coyote sings memories. Eroding joints, the clattering of fallen rocks. Limbs in the wind, skin leaves.

Climbed a mountain and saw Shiprock again. What an incredible beast that thing is. Sorry I only have a phone camera but see if you can spot it, like fifty miles away.

I’m turning thirty-fuckin-seven this Wednesday! If you wanna help me celebrate, or just keep in touch in a cute way, you can write me at:

Kiah MGC, General Delivery, Dolores CO 81323

Gifts of stove and pot, from Rainbow and blood family, respectively. Stolen propane from a big box store. Fresh veggies and good spices. Most importantly though: the time it took to get proficient at living like this (Did you know that I was not a camper prior to moving into Casa Sorcha/my car?), without a fridge and on my own. Buen trabajo, buen provecho.

I can see the Milky Way trickling through the sky from one horizon to the other. All I have to do is swivel my upturned head. Even as I write I catch one, and another! Shooting stars among this glorious, innumerable density of incomprehensibly distant burning gasses.

The ravens are up to something. Forming a parliament or a murder, they croak overhead accompanied by wing-swept rushes that remind me of the first time their noises were startling. Dry wind like a comically loud whisper, sometimes a rustling high whistle, whooshes beneath raven bodies pushing through sky like phantoms. Thick, percussive birdsong from the juniper brush: a brilliant but simple, unseen xylophone. Gargled notes rhythmless; sweet melodious chuckles. Cluck, chortle, squawk, caw. The ravens are up to something.

Tonight I’m at a new campsite. It’s in the national forest, but the dogs bark in the distance like it’s a whole city neighborhood. Earlier I could hear the much more nearby campers, but not see them. I only see forest. There are plenty of ambient highway and road sounds.

It’s late now and the moon is bright and all the humans are quiet but the dogs are still at it in the far distance. I’m inside my car with the tent up when I’m suddenly aware of not being alone. I mean theres always bugs, but something else now. And then I hear it, a weird growl that doesn’t sound so much menacing as wary. Because it sounds rather like a dog, I immediately just say “No” in my most reproachful, also hopeful, voice. I hold as still as one can while shaking, barely breathing, listening hard. I have bear spray in reach but I’m unable to muster the will to move before the growl comes again, this time somehow more plaintive. It has to be a dog, I tell myself, as I again intone a “No” that would freeze any good boy. Then I move quickly. Toward the bear spray and my headlamp, immediately searching outside the car from its safe-ish confines—there’s still a tent at the rear—for the source of my adrenaline rush. I put the lamp in the brightest setting and shine it kind of wildly, searching for movement. There’s nothing. No hurried shadow, no quaking shrubbery, not even a neighbor calling their pet home. The far away dogs resume their barking. Are there more now than before? I shine my lamp uselessly into the underbrush. What the fuck just happened.

If shoulders could talk I would lean in, listen to the years. Sometimes the stretch between hip and rib whispers stories. I want to know how thighs get their living, what makes feet move. My ears yearn to press against spine, hear the details. Hands in hair, fuzz, fur. Skin smooth and rough, scarred and sensitive. The cracks and creaks. Tell me everything, please.

I don’t do much with any kind of consistency, but I sure do love celebrating the moon. Here’s my favorite when she’s big and potent, which should peak for the Harvest Moon about twelve hours from this posting. This ritual is relevant whenever the moon looks full to the human eye, so timing needn’t be precise. Buen provecho.

We laughed together on the phone. They had seen so many varied stunning artworks, described their detail well while I imagined. It’s called the Harvest Moon because it helped farmers work late to finish their work before the first frost. In the high desert the sun has retired but I sure can see around me. A solitary coyote howl careens sharply through the open sky ahead of the distant highway buzz. Across that street is Mesa Verde. Three moons ago I cried heading up, sang in the canyons. At this campsite she and I talked for eight hours one lazy day, I swaying in my hammock. Returning, to somewhere around 6,500’, the warm breeze reminds me that my world is the same. Only this moonlight demands to bathe bare bodies; in my mind it’s yours with mine. Ninety nights, or a lifetime: it took another week for my heart to catch up. Not much, so much, has changed.

I couldn’t tell when twilight ended. The moon took over where it left off. Out here I scratch down the days with a burnt stick on a rock. The cows came to say good morning, then the quails said go away. All the humans want to know is whether I will stay. Did you see that little kid held up to the net by another? He didn’t make the basket but he sure didn’t seem bothered. They hurt my face we laughed so hard. I’m smiling at the thought. I want each to be whatever we are, and nothing that we’re not.

If I couldn’t play along that time. If I cried in bleak frustration. Know it was your love alone that ripped through my pretensions. I’ve been in one spot several nights, and only just heard an owl. The haunting hoots are calming and I know you’re with me now.

You call me from the road, cat stowed in the backseat. You’re crossing this whole continent in late summer heat. The cruelty of apathy had me startled yesterday. There’s so little that needs doing but it all feels in the way. I need to eat more protein but I don’t want any meat. I need to drink more water but I always have to pee. They say they really want you but then they never call. I don’t want what doesn’t want me; I don’t want much at all. When you get to where you’re going, do you think you’ll know? I thought I knew all summer, but perhaps I moved to slow. If hurry is what works then I guess I’ll always fail. In Minnesota I began to pray, under strawberry-sized hail. Are you going through Chicago? Seeing friends in St. Louis? The country spreads out far and fast when you come from the East. I’m starting to familiarize my eyes with local birds. I don’t know if I can say the same when racism is ignored. There’s pros and cons to every place, and this one is just new. But it’d be much more lonely if you weren’t moving too.

heat thick. air thicker. sticky hot stillness

deep rich greens. deep dense muck

giant muskrat. roseate spoonbill. wild boar

wet winds ravaging regularly

floodwaters expected always

shore birds siphon marshes

alligators seen from highways

predation in daylight

slow but steady

wet and ready

living coastal strife