The Narrative Image

A thin, icy, cloud painted crystals overnight onto chilly windshields Till the morning’s faux summer-sun chased it into low places Winter’s premature apparition melts in gullies, carved across sloping fields Behold a golden diamond set in a blue dome of sky, quiet and still as if in permanent stasis Until Winter’s specter fingers stretch forth, over brittle, golden-fields shivering Birds bail out of the sky, as if some great dangerous tide is turning I stand atop a deep cut scar, a canyon, a river’s ceaseless dithering Gusting winds kick up a haze though no fire is left burning This bird’s eye view reveals my path through history, those days of triple digits The river, flashing cold blue grins, teases saying, “I still got your (pretty-good) fishing pole” It seems unlikely that a river’s fits and starts, its endless fidgets Would craft such nonsensical wondrous scenes — absent any goal ...

  Mt. Adams as seen from the Cooper Spur shelter ( Mt. Hood ) on 09-22-12 Mt. Hood ’s lengthening shadow, straining for the eastern horizon  Smoke from the fire doing a pretty fair impersonation of clouds   The timberline trail spirals on around the mountain  Toyed with the idea of composing a shot here, but Lola the dog was feeling territorial  Mt. Adams beyond the shelter  Mt. St. Helens   As night falls, the source of the smoke becomes evident  The scale of the fire is slowly revealed as the sky gets darker  An inferno about the size of a mountain  Swirling winter clouds ride autumn’s cool night air into the valley, like circling predators patiently waiting for a flickering campfire to go out.  Detailed information about the fire can be found here:  http://inciweb.org/incident/3249/

4. And the Lord said unto Moses, “This is the land I promised you, but you shall not enter. Psych.” 5. And Moses died. DEUTERONOMY  (as paraphrased by Shalom Auslander in The Foreskin’s Lament) I wanted to talk to God the other day. I thought it should be possible because on any given Sunday, if I go to my church, the respectable people of my community are gathered there addressing God as ‘father’ and there’s a kind of script they hand out that even gives you appropriate words to pray. Sometimes there is even a collective petition – they all kind of do this choral speaking thing - usually to ask for health related things. So it isn’t just some isolated crazies carrying on one-sided conversations on the sidewalks of downtown Portland who talk to God…it’s all those adults who watched you grow up and who made you go to Sunday school and who otherwise seem completely rational. What I wanted to talk about was the way people you love eventually get old, and t...