Room

click to expand

The dignity            

of open space.      

The value              

of the long view.   

Graves Beside the Trail

Detail of a photo illustration by Ashley Z.Boon

Swallows banked and dove

over the abandoned field

steeped in briars and asters

tall as the family stones

children and spouses

slowly eroding.

The stones shared an age

in evening's pall—

nineteen twice.

We stopped to watch

as if we wouldn't forget.

Uno vida. Uno vida.

Near the Salisbury Viaduct on The Great Allegheny Passage.

In the Void

no human sound

night crawls out of the woods

you did what you could

you tell yourself

expanding with the dark

Undertow

Duck, NC, 10/14/14

Did you feel it 

in your heart  

the warming tides 

that pull us out 

the swells 

that lift us up 

unable to touch bottom 

and how much longer 

can we swim 

parallel to shore ? 

Desire

Some nights                    

are longer                    

Some hearts                    

never rest                    

Thunderheads

View from the center

  

The day was my mandala.

I began at the perimeter

and worked my way in,

first light like a ghost

in the woods to the east,

last light like coals

behind Laurel Ridge.

At the center I sat on the hill,

the dog snuffling deep in the field

where goldenrod shook,

swallows diving and looping above us,

awe billowed into the sky,

limned as the towering clouds,

a life at my back.

I wasn't alone.

Feels Like Rain

Watching shadows

in the wind,

writing down

the whispers in the trees,

seeing what's not there.

Are you thinking of me, too,

the way we were,

even if the future

lies behind us now ?

Thunder shakes the ground.

Catalpa

 

          

I am blurred at the edges

Both of us

Deep in the shadows

Reading each other's minds

In the animal heat of July.

The old catalpa stands guard

Everything else a mirage

Except what's imagined.

Why So Fast?

   

Why so fast, I ask myself,

Leaning back on slower time,

Arms extended, lungs filled,

Floating on summer while I can,

And the day gains a certain eternity.

The Choices We Made

The long, backward reach

Of memory, our phantoms

Revisit us now.

Goldfinches, Fawns, Neighbors from Afar

 

Never done

With looking,

Standing around,

As the poet said,

With your arms open,

Everything

Comes closer.

Make your own list.

After Mary Oliver's Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

The Isolated Now

Not yet too late,

considering the vanishments,

when the west opened at sunset,

as it often does,

and we were reminded —

the isolated now

is what we have —

how we treat each other,

and dogs, and birds, and grass,

whirling through enormous night,

the quality of that,

and gone.