To Drink from the Spring

Early 19th Century water source.  (JO'B)

                            To drink from the spring they drank from          

                                           when their walls were logs          

                            to clear the field          

                                           and plow to the edge of the forest          

                            to die in winter          

                            with the snow          

blowing through the broken window          

                           To write in a pure language          

of stone and ash and silt          

                                           to read in candlelight          

                                           to lie down in asters          

                                           to drink shadows          

—with lines after Tomaz Salaman.    

Dark Iris

JO'B    

                          Dark iris of the could-have-been,

                          a love we can't decode

                          and never dared to touch,

                          disturb the rain,

                          upset the order of its cells, 

                          disrupt the spinning universe,

                          never to recover —

                          so much we'll never know,

                          

                          but we pretend.

 

Notes to Self on a Cold Day in May

JO'B. 

Slower, deeper, each breath,

yours and the earth's.

Who do you think you are?

Don't love your life too much,

Mary Oliver wrote,

and vanished into the world.

Aural

JO'B

 

  

   Under the green canopy

   of my 82nd spring,

   Each morning

   more silent

   than the last,

   One dream

   flows into

   the next,

   And then no one,

   and then Tao.

Timelapse

JO'B  

                                                   A certain elegance

                                                   still standing,

                                                   stoic with purpose

                                                   and faith in one's self,

                                                   waiting for the miracle to come

                                                   as the trees overtake us,     

                                                   our graceful surrender,     

                                                   our gorgeous collapse

                                                   enriching the ground     

                                                   where we fall.   

Moonlight Wanderer

JO'B

 

         

I wasn't lonely              

Until you spoke my name              

And now I wonder              

Love in a Time of Covid

JOB

Did you get what you wanted at last,

Convinced all that was fiction at best,

Madness perhaps, a selective contagion,

Virulent to the maimed and the quick?

Blessed be the bi-polar,

Their heaven is upon us.

Do you pretend

You are not molten at the core?

Arc

JO'B. 

                                                       Late in a ride,

                                                       Late in a day,

                                                       Late in a life,

                                                       A deepening sense

                                                       Of gratitude.

"Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about

to begin, only to realize it's almost over." -- Oliver Sacks

Given the Chance

JO'B  

Stop pushing through

A field of dandelions

Releasing in the wind,

Bow down, and watch

Achenes take flight.

All is not lost just yet.

The earth will heal herself

If the young take up the fight.

 

JO'B  

 

On the Anniversary of My Daughter's Death

Blue cohosh                           (JO'B)

  
                    

                    In the slow, slow unwinding

                    of the year's slowest month,

                    alone in the dripping woods

                    with the blue cohosh rising,

                    how do I sing you

                    the phrases of the moon?

                    Does tomorrow exist

                    as the rain down the glass?

                    Can the fire in the grate

                    absolve us of the future?

                    I listen for hours trying to learn

                    the language of water and flame.

                    Cast beyond the verge,

                    it's all we can do to cry out

                    to one another in the dark,

                    like bats hunting moths

                    in windowlight after a storm,

                    the universe hung in the trees.

 —first published April 28. 2015