Elan Mudrow
Smidgens
Wet Pine Needles
Running the brittle floor—upon leaves settled to soil.
With mild hands wandering—through air and pressed sunlight.
Becoming branches—breaching the film of moist sky.
Clinging to winter’s sun—lucent thoughts, fictile.
Moving with the wildness—of the warm, fragile body.
Its abstractions of molds—ravines, dips, and death.
Wet pine needles held in a beam of furtive light.
Mountain Lake
I sit with her
Placing her in memory
Giving thoughts strength, yet
In her silence, she frightens me.
I rely on others
Camping upon her shore
To soothe my worry.
And although I haven’t
Seen her rimmed with snow
Echoing the clearest of nights,
Pitted with raindrops
Upon her clear face,
Witnessed her held tight
By mist and clouds,
I know she has experienced this.
She reflects me
Placing me inside her memory
Giving strength to her beauty, yet
In my silence, I frighten her.
She relies on the stream
And springs to ease her.
And although she hasn’t seen
All who I love, have loved,
My stumbles and woes
On nights of anxiety,
My elations and successes,
The clatter of the city
Reverberates within me
She knows I have experienced this.
elanmudrow@gmail.com
Ghost Story For The Wilderness Impaired
Timothy Lake July 2018
She’s a ghost. I know that. She brushes her fingers along my shoulders and I will look up to find her playing among the trees, pretending to be the wind. She’ll drop a pinecone or a small branch as a reminder. Then, off she goes to the deeper part of the forest where I can’t follow. She laughs. I can’t hear it, but I know she’s laughing.
This spirit of hers doesn’t frighten me. But there are times when the forest is as still as death. It’s upon these moments, in silent life, when I look behind me on the trail and shudder in my aloneness.
She returns, that’s what ghosts do, with her sound, a rustling, a stirring, a theme she buries deep inside me. Its tune reminds me that I’m also a ghost. At times, this makes me sad, to know I’m as invisible as her, but it’s her way of empowering me, to haunt. I can’t help but to be…a ghost.
I can tell you this one thing. It’s the only thing I really, really know. If you listen, you will also know you’re a ghost. Even when you’re in the middle of nowhere, look up, and see a jet leaving contrails high in the sky, above the wilderness, without making a sound.
Rain Jacket
You’ve had a few rain jackets.
Some of them have fallen apart, others weren’t a good fit from the get-go, a couple of them ran off with someone else.
Still, it’s hard to face the rain without one.
You’ve done that too, plenty of times.
It’s tough getting soaked.
Yet, at other times you’ve enjoyed letting the rain hit you smack-dab on the head while finding a new rain jacket.
Funny, aren’t you?
The Ocean Welcomes Me Back
She knows me.
Though, I haven’t seen
All that she is…..
All her anger and angst
Frozen at times, treacherous.
I know her
From the safety of my footing.
She can pull me, She pulls me, I am pulled
Not by ebb, but by longing
A craving for our meeting.
She allows me to see her.
I am but painted doll
Easily tripped into a fall.
We are cyclic, together.
Friends as we are
I see her placid face
Fierce, reflecting sky.
Her cheeks aged, rippled
As they were at the beginning.
She’s my crone
My witch of calm
Curled slightly
With wavy hair
Rebelling,,,,,
The straightening of her tides.
Her voice, mesmerized magnetic
To my metal ears.
Grounded by emotion
She nudges me
To a rhythm depth tone.
My womb vibrates
With her motion
At the same time
I am her birth.
Her movement is mine
I am she, like her,
The invertebrate
With liquid body
Skin of whatever color
You wish to call me
We are deep in wrappings
Around dense mineral
Earthen cultrate creatures
Terrestrial mud makers
That simple creation act
Pottery, clay, and figure
Shaped by moisture
Solidified by solar storm.
I feel like she is forever
Whose depths
I know by kindred.
We raise our spirits
(For me, this once)
To mist and cloud
Transform, evaporate
Until our salt
Is yanked from our souls
And we fall
To new fawns
of phosphorescence
If I were to say
“Listen to her”
You would have
Already heard
Come at a Price
The amount of alcohol in her drink.
The loudness of her laugh.
Soft shirt sleeves, brushing raw, coded skin.
Tender angst made her…
Makes her
Voice rise
Like dinnertime restaurant dishes.
All she said, forgotten.
All she would have said, remembered.
The High Lakes
The high lakes, frozen, clear,
Distort reflections of the mountain.
Old men with trekking poles
Filter through the forest.
All with some form of Achilles
And Homeric hunger pangs.
Drawn to recite soliloquies
To the unmoving cold.
Return to the parking lot
To winter tires and snow chains.
Alice
She sets a folded towel upon cool sheets, her ass makes a depression on the mattress.
Silence is never a full-proof method of understanding each other, even if hands are involved.
They touch, then they talk. Talking is never a full-proof method of…
His leg dangles off her bed. She gets up, opens the closet door.
There’s a mirror attached to the back of the closet door. She sees my reflection and doesn’t know it’s her. She touches the mirror, thinking, as she always has, that it will lead somewhere.
She leaves fingerprints.
.
The Town That Fell Into The Sea
The ocean hides, sitting low like the winter sun.
Its sound seeps through knolls
Through sand, vine, and footprints
Through trees rooted in confused snarl
Threading lightly between our anonymous hands
Our faces washed away
Until the lights of Highway 101
Reattach themselves to the coast range.
(Photo: Reflection from Tillamook Bay, during the oncoming night in the fog)
Above Multnomah Falls
This warm winter makes the creek scream like spring.
I dip my hand in, as far in as my long sleeves let me
Smooth stones, slick, cold life, years in my hands.
My fragile blood beats, knows the water by heart.
It’s good to be wary of the speed of the current
where it licks up upon the shore, sure feet are never a given.
It can bite you, gently, or with unforgiving teeth.
Its noise covers all voices, who’ve come beyond the falls
I head for snow level, it’s high for this time of the year.
Pine needles dot its surface like a mild sprinkling of spice.
Towhees, ravens, and buntings call with haunting songs
An echo between their voices, moves with the forest, downhill.
There, below, near the river and I-84, the creek is a maiden jumping.
Thousands of selfies, one tripod, a few point and shoots
attempt to catch her in the act of hitting the ground.
She refuses to pose.
Elan Mudrow 
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