Weather + Hitchhikers

Portland is cold but pending. The air feels as if the city waits beneath an avalanche. Like the cold could set loose any minute or the cold could remain on an inaccessible shelf for one hundred more years. My survival instinct is live and my energy is amped up to not be defeated by the outdoors. There is an amount of self destructive risk I enjoy. How far can I go in the cold. My body is not made of glass, a mantra that is repeated in my head, but also not made of steel. After the start of the year, the trauma of Bambi being bit, the recovery, there is this gap in me where my emotions drained out of, an empty cistern or sylex awaiting the next sacrifice to activate it. That empty bowl feels too drained to perform its magic. One cannot keep rubbing the lamp and expecting the genie to appear every time. Perhaps the bowl is as cold as the weather. Maybe I need to gather kindling, spark a small fire, heat the bowl and the air, inhale the hot air, feel myself expand, warmed, and float off to what is next.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Tiny Dish

Your bitter snap of cold to the touch
what wishes could you grant me
what spirit could possess me
with twigs gathered by field mice
in your mouth I build a pyre
big enough to fit in my palm
through the drizzle of smoke
I sing my wishes

⚬ ⚬ ⚬ ⚬ ⚬

We Pick Up Hitchhikers

In winter, in the heat of a snowstorm
the vents of the old pickup heaving
on the freeway, in a leather trenchcoat
shuffling along the side of the emergency lane

Don’t you dare
I can’t not, he’s walking in a blizzard

When the tires bed into the snow bank
we’re unsure if we will ever escape

She climbs in the back with us
He shakes off his coat and climbs in the front

Just ten minutes of small talk
then he climbs out at the next gas station

Now when snowfall blankets my morning
I push out my neighbors cars
When I come inside, fingers needled and tingling,
grabbing tightly to the curve of a warm mug
the world feels more level and more understood