Tahoe Blue

(September 2021. There’s a bit of a gap in my poetry as I spend 5 weeks with Alison going all around the Northwest. I’m too busy adventuring to write poetry during that time, with Baker Lake as the big exception. Then, I dropped Alison at the Reno Airport, spent a week at Tahoe with some friends, then flew to New York to drive the Kristof’s car across the country to Oregon. Then I flew from Oregon back to Reno, got the bus ready for Renegade Burning Man, and went out into the Black Rock Desert. At Burning Man, I was also too busy to write poetry lol. Finally, after Burning Man, I spent a week around Reno cleaning up the bus, fixing some issues, and chilling with my brilliant friend Luca who happened to be starting a poetry masters at the University of Reno. We went to Tahoe together, and we went to a great spot that Alison and I had found, the ‘Secret Nude Beach.’ We sat on our own respective giant rocks on the shore, and each wrote our own poem. I remember his was excellent, and remember the difference in our styles. Here is my first Tahoe poem.)

Tahoe Blue

I would drive eternity
To see one beautiful place
Along the way—
The world is worth seeing once.

I am here
Just in time for sunset
It has touched the mountains
It is burning behind blue mountains
It is an orange horizon hearth
Along wavecrests of dark blue mountains
Fading into the last light blue sky
And the darkening waves of Tahoe
Blue and shadowy falling towards me.

My shore splashes…
I am here.

All blue is deepening—

I must write faster
The darkness is coming under waves
And I can see more than I can write
And I can imagine more than I can see
And I can want more than I can imagine.

But as long as I live I will be ending,
And though I am strapped to this granite
Riding the world,
I will one day go under the waves
Forever to integrate the great shadow.

Yet the orange is still burning through
The blue hour— it lasts so long,
This slow death, this romantic deepening,
This blue and blissful smile and tear
Of being here, where for all the wear
Would be worth it, to have at least once
Seen such beautiful things—
I would as gladly see it all again
And again endlessly as go
Into the blue blackening forever
Everblending toward nothing after ending.