music: tell me, au revoir simone
mood: oyster realms & alkaline

he lays murky deep cups out like a palette, glasses circling the table and the spoons pointing in from the edges, already heavy with condensation and clean with the steam. pouring water from a pair of broken kettles, making their surfaces billow with the sandglass patterns of brewing. we wait before cutting into the pointed, loamy depths. we are studying the complexities and layerings of coffee: the sunlight, the soil, the seed. we learn to read with the texture and weight of taste all the discretions of the harvest. my favourites are from ethiopia: they are pronounced & floral & brisk as blueberry sweetness, or remind me of a forgotten time. this is the taste of tobacco flowers & bergamot. sumatrans curl at the back of my throat, dark and resineous, rich with creosotes & notes like the blackest sheet of music i have ever seen. i am still feeling for the stretch and warp of the pianist's hands.

the world fell clean and washed and dry as felted wool after the storms cleared from hills of nowhere (we are somewhere not anywhere at all). and i watch your fingers crossed & unconscious as tea leaves in my saucer, arranging the world like a tapestry of myth and maybes. i have been so busy dreaming of the heartostay.

listen: something good, red river
look: my sweet old etcetera

it was the most splendid first of spring because i had forgotten all about the equinox until long after sunset, too caught up in the simple acts of living. i breakfasted with m. on hot-cross buns and almond lattes in the bakery-soft morning, the whimsy of afternoon spent with n. citydrifting through the secret latticework streets. we sat on falling down, crumbling cement steps of winter, eating take-out pad thai & leafing through the new gastronomy, entirely drenched with spice & sunlight. i read poems from a half-purchased book into the fabric of day, like cups of oversweet tea, like sounding a tenter of the here & there.

all week long i have been noticing the alien smell of caramel & coffeegrounds against my skin, in my hair; the nicest feeling of gathering a connate pattern of very late nights. the orchestra of empty glasses are the remnants of a party, the room of found instruments: a melodica, a broken accordion, the we're-out-of-tunes guitar. ideas & questions filtering in and through the air & all around. we talk over the droning about the troubadour anthems of our parents and the 1960s and the hollows we've prescribed ourselves by time. the ice melts sharp in glasses of whiskey and novel faces in the candlelight & we are downtown, deconstructing bookshelves and now it is the morning, dear.

ten year old boys sitting sideways & restless on the cafe chairs,
untwisting cinnamon rolls into the snail shell laze
of march break afternoons.

the sweep of the airplane is just like
the trace of your finger against sky.

music: 5 years time, noah & the whale
mood: proclivity for productivity

there's something about six o'clock and the way contours hang deep from the saw-toothed parts of our houses. sunlight across powerlines & the dry salt tumbling & staining old lanes of traffic. i will never be anywhere as pointed as a rooftop shadow.

i spent yesterday afternoon with m. at the slip of ocean i like the best. we sat with our legs crossed & ate synthetic things, filling ourselves with round & cheerful colours. when i listened, i could hear the dull gurgle of the tide, a sound that echoes in the makeshift streams of snow-melt. with toes flat against the edge of water, we look up into the sheltering boards so we can dream better about remember whens. is that supposed to be a tulip? he asks. it looks more like a half-eaten, plum-coloured pear

& i thought
we were going to look right through and see the sky.

it is spring today & i caught the very first crocuses! a year a thousand years ago, they were ancient & wise, ossified by winter. these are such wonderful, straightforwardly flowers.