September 17, 2012

Flicker at the birdbath late in the afternoon. He was vivid, immense. When he was done bathing, he perched on the rim and opened his beak like he was meaning to call, but nothing came out. In a few minutes I watched, there were seven species at the bath.

Have I mentioned the brass fossils and dinosaurs set into the floor of the Denver airport?

I thought of how, if I had grown up in Durango, I would need a whole new vocabulary to write of my surroundings. I would have words for the graduations of dry and the shades of shadow through the day on the near mountains. I would have to learn the flowers over again for, except in the town gardens, they are all different. I might have been mute there, a man of action, having nothing to say to complete the perfect light.

In Durango: A hummingbird came to the terrace garden where I drank my drink and wrote my poems. She was not a ruby throat.

People do not appreciate how low-maintenance I am.

Dreams last night of smoke people. Gradually you learned that some people were not real, but made out of smoke. I don’t know what the consequences were. Maybe none. Maybe they were just like us, except for that.