After April rain |
Take it from one
Who does not
Whatever else
You have lost
If you have each other
You have it all.
Rural in Nature, Transcendental in Temperament
in something close to silence
in something close to wisdom
Aloft |
guardians of solitude
protectors of each other
in the charm of magnetic fields
respectful in our ways.
The mind holds many truths
we've learned not to name
in something close to wisdom
in something close to silence
in something close to tragedy
we feel the same.
—photo edited from the public domain
Black coffee in a tin cup
on a board porch in the March woods
with crows announcing the end of winter,
I'm thinking heaven can exist on the earth
a few moments at a time, rocking
in my great grandmother's mission rocker
included free with a new cook stove
she bought for the family farm,
my great grandfather off in the oil fields
drilling another dry hole, dreaming of wealth,
not yet defeated, maybe still thinking,
as Thoreau wrote in his journal in 1842,
Heaven is to come, because this can't be it.
But it can, it can be, it can be black coffee
in a tin cup on a board porch
for a few minutes in March.
No such luck. Tidioute, PA, c. 1860s (from a family album) |
I have a strained relationship
With sleep
Sometimes in dreams
I sense your touch
But always
When I wake
You're never there
Here comes the day again,
creeping out of the west woods,
creeping yellow across fallow fields,
devouring the shallow snow as it comes,
scaring off the night
that hides in the old farmhouse
as a chill in the cellar stones,
that hides in the mind of the sleepless
as a reckoning
with the failures of a life
marching mute
through the goldenrod bones.
Central Park carousel, NYC |
When the worst happens,
silence arrives.
We sat in the park
in our out-of-town coats,
her brother, her mother, and me,
without, without a word.
It was spring in New York,
cold, cold and bright,
the gears of the carousel
still wrapped for winter,
the painted wooden horses
motionless on their poles,
frozen in mid-gallop.
Silence, silence was the whole story.
—first lines by Jane Hirschfield