Writing and Photos
12/15/20 The veil may be thin, but it’s still impossible to see through in certain light, from certain angles, with certain eyes. May my eyes grow confused and unsure. 12/16/20 Somehow, on the wrong side of the raindrops. Thirsty. 12/17/20 I look at pictures of last week’s shadows. Last week’s chipped red paint. I stay... Continue Reading →
12/1/20 If you walk slowly enough or are willing to stop and double back, then sometimes you’ll see the bottoms of raindrops through the translucent cup of a leaf. 12/2/20 This weak, mid-day dapple wrecks me. Find me burrowed in a bed of damp fir needles. Find me humming melancholy love songs under my breath.... Continue Reading →
9/16/20 The punk rock kids across the street still sit on their front steps and smoke. The builders rebuilding the burnt down house across the street still nail and paint. But clients call and cancel, unable to step outside to get the mail. And I only duck out for thirty seconds at a time to... Continue Reading →
9/2/20 Mushrooms are an excuse. Going in, I didn’t care if I found any. Going out, my empty hands were free for moss and bark. 9/3/20 In the midst of all this dry and pale, red demands its due. 9/4/20 This is so much better than the picture I thought I was taking. A dahlia... Continue Reading →
8/21/20 With so much on fire, it’s nice to see something soft and green take over. 8/22/20 There’s a jewel in the center. But it’s not the prize. Let’s maze our way there slowly and make plenty of mistakes. 8/23/20 I picked these flowers from my yard. All the others I’ve picked have faded in... Continue Reading →
8/6/20 In the middle of the afternoon broil, the shadows revealed themselves as beautiful monsters licking coolness onto my feet. Overnight, they turned themselves into rain clouds. 8/7/20 I just liked the flower and didn’t see the wasp at first. Neither seemed to care For my visit. 8/8/20 The police turned into riot police a... Continue Reading →
7/23/20 My friend’s conservative aunt in Austin asked him how he was doing with worry in her voice. She’d seen Portland on tv. He asked her how she was doing in retort, having seen Texas on tv. 7/24/20 This tree came with a name tag it read to me. Incense cedar. And that, apparently, was... Continue Reading →
7/9/20 The once-hidden sweet was never shy. She just wasn’t ready. Beauty is the armored body, opening. 7/10/20 The dance goes silvery then delicate then complicated then slippery then gone. 7/11/20 There is deep satisfaction in a miniature, a diorama, a dollhouse. Not so I can be god/giant wielding tiny things with my meaty fingers,... Continue Reading →
6/25/20 This tree told me they had young dreams of being a cloud but it took many many years to become one. 6/26/20 Stayed up too late nursing a hunch about out a slightly different future. Followed by two heart-racing phone calls, some strange number wanting 4am FaceTime. Who is this? I texted back but... Continue Reading →
6/11/20 No words today. Just color and light 6/12/20 I heard two gunshots in the middle of the night, close but not too close. And then I chased the guns through my dreams, one gun for each BANG. In the middle of my third dream, the guns turned into knives and the bangs turned into... Continue Reading →
5/27/20 Some buildings look more at home in their Covid clothes than others. I can’t call this place old friend since it’s been decades since I walked through the doors. It’s more like a friendly spirit that’s lingered at the edges of my entire adult life, grumbling the same thing all along. I’ve got nothing... Continue Reading →
5/13/20 This would have been a block I raced by as a kid. A place where the doors don’t have handles, the stairs are more moss than concrete, and the ground cover is just waiting for its moment to devour. Why make the walls out of holes if you didn’t want everyone passing by to... Continue Reading →
4/29/20 This was a different neighborhood, but barely. A block I’d driven by a thousand times but never passed through on foot. And there they were, filling the front yard of an unassuming house. I nearly fell to my knees, but caught myself and simply bowed my head instead. Forgive me, I said. My worship... Continue Reading →
4/15/20 If you stand in just the right place, relax your eyes in their sockets, tilt back your head, unstick your tongue, remember your right twelfth rib, make friends with your knees and sink into the wide universe one inch under the cracked sidewalk, then a light appears behind a skull-sized ball of blooms and... Continue Reading →
4/9/20 I remind myself: Long conversations without the word virus or shelter will return. My friends hips, legs and feet will return. Days not slashed through with the same universal grim will return. Diane will return, washing my hair and rubbing deep into my scalp before she cuts off all the ratty ends. Noisy bars... Continue Reading →
4/1/20 This perfect friend. Someone who moved right up against me in a flagrant display of connection but didn’t need a single word of conversation. Someone made from the sun on my back. 4/2/20 Sometimes it is less unfurl and more unhinge. Less bloom and more burst. Less flower and more fever. 4/3/20 I bend... Continue Reading →
3/25/20 You think a color can’t save you. It’s just a shade of bright green that sounds like a bad idea for a baby name. Chartreuse. Maybe Chartreuse was the little sister of Chivas, that guy you went to school with. Was it Shakespeare or that ridiculous class where you were the only one who... Continue Reading →
3/18/20 Inside, our people or person or own chatter brain fill more space than they ever have. We grow to the size of each room we enter. Outside, the sidewalks are busy, the green spaces are full of people trying to deflate down to normal height and width. I look up and, for a moment,... Continue Reading →
3/11/20 The calls have come. Soon I’ll be officially non-essential. My hand on their sharp shoulder blades, their paper-thin arms and aching fingers now has a different kind of potential. I become threat instead of tenderness, harm instead of relief. I’ll sit at home like their sons and daughters and watch the world try to... Continue Reading →
3/4/20 I drive through the farmland around Forest Grove every week and every week I search for a safe spot to pull over and take a photo of the beauty there: The unpredictable sky, the geometry of fields, the satisfying disruption caused by small hills and solitary oaks. The shoulders of the roads are mostly... Continue Reading →
2/26/20 Yesterday a caregiver taught me that cats have 13 muscles in each ear. A nursing home resident taught me that a busy elephant is called a multitusker. And a palm tree taught me that it grows beautiful purple berries. Feel it - the slip of space between rib and lung. 2/27/20 Waterfalls of tea... Continue Reading →
2/19/20 Here, in my home, I am tucked in on all sides. Houses and shadows and fences and punk rock bands and impatient traffic and yard debris and that thing, once useful, slowly making its way either toward the garbage bin or into the ground. These lives hold me. But with that vast valley still... Continue Reading →
2/12/20 The snow diamonds were laid out in wide swaths, a valley of shine. But the windows of the van refused even a moment of clarity so the diamonds came streaked in sand and frost. The driver bit his nails for four hours straight, one hand and then the other, pausing only to pass the... Continue Reading →
2/5/20 One moment you’re a star. One moment you’re a puddle. It’s the same moment. 2/6/20 I don’t know. I keep writing and erasing. Erasing isn’t really part of freewriting rules. But who’s in charge here? Who decided, that instead of straight metal bars, to go with the a more elaborately patterned panel? As far... Continue Reading →
1/15/20 New structures make new shadows and new reflections. New hours make new weather. The building that took too many years to finish sits empty. The snow predicted all week for the valley floor stayed in the mountains. Still, my block and the sky around it shook a bit of glow and sparkle, in thanks... Continue Reading →
Tracy Burkholder 