Resolute

New age country totem

Burning in the gloaming,

Townships with no DSL

Dirt roads with no cable

No signal in these hills

Except to wrap

The chestnut post

Against the howling dark

Determined to make still

Something of ourselves,

To turn the wheel,

To celebrate the turning,

To persevere with joy.

-

Outside the Harness Shop in Springs

Please click to enlarge.

Parking lot a little closer to the sky,

Horses hooves a little closer to the earth,

I feel a little foolish in my Englishman's excess,

Envying the slower turning wheel.

-

Hymn

Walden Pond 1,240 miles

May we drift

In the simplicity

Of winter,

Our stubborn

Ardent striving

Become the quiet

Patient hymn

Of life.

-

Wide-Angle in a Tracking Snow

Here, then, is the afternoon,

The shifting contradictions

Between shadow and sunlight

Between mystery and physicality

Where a photograph is not

The thing photographed

But  the shape of feelings

Unmediated and true,

These woods and fields become

Keats' vale of soul-making.

Rain Becomes Snow

Unsettled night

Rain becomes snow

Looking for you.





-

Retrospective

Night's jeweled dome drifts over the Pacific,

Our life star rises in the woods behind the stable,

Grass breaks underfoot, and jays hail the day.

Content in the place I have made for myself,

Longing to forgive and to be forgiven,

Naive by choice, hungry for the sensations

And the simple pleasures of existence,

Attracted to kindness and to imagination,

I empty myself in stillness, that I may be filled.

-

Perpetual

Laurel Hill Creek Valley. Please click to enlarge.

Rains end.

Fogs lift.

Close to the ground

Beginnings begin.

-

Low Turning

Wind  booms on the wooded hill and sets

The dogs to barking under roiling clouds

At the end of the briefest day, beginning

Of the longest night, when it's easy to give in

To the end of promise, to dwindling days,

Afraid for what is still to be lost.


We must make do. We must make do

With movement, make do with wind

And with the sun, not with the flame of

Rapture we may never find, but with its seeking.

-under the spell of Joan Didion.

The Palms of Our Hands

(For Those Who Remain)


No greater comfort than touch

Compassion's heat divorced

From words from gaze from prayer

No greater encouragement to face

The front and not look back too much

To walk the sodden ground all of us

Lonely, the mud of the grave on our shoes.

-

The Real Mystery is the Life of Others

"Can you tell us how to lead our lives?"

Listeners asked, for they were sick with doubt.

The room grew quiet. A fine snow hissed in the trees.

The poet put down the book, his own,

From which he had been reading aloud,

And sank for a moment in his own currents.

When he surfaced he said,

"Differently."

A few understood.

-

Therefore, Revel

Proximity

with death

brings clarity,

our capacity

to love and

to forgive

revealed,

passersby all

who won't

last long.

-

Seekers

When you look for it, there is nothing to see.

When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear.

When you use it, it is inexhaustible.

Such is the nature of peace.

–adaptation from Tao te Ching.

Gathered from the Day

Spread before you,

The mottoes of gods,

Spells, strange weathers,

Archaic phrases,

Currency unfamiliar

In this land of faces,

These I offer.

– adaption of three lines by James Richardson

In Wool We Greet the NIght

Yet another sunset we've never seen before,

Snow field blue to black and us alone with loss,

Yet another chorus of the dead to help us find

The beauty and the spirit of the now and here.

-

Frost Under Stone

More a rockpile than a wall,

Heaving now as Frost

Penetrates the ground, something

There is that doesn't love it,

That wants it down – Gravity

You say, and I say Elves,

Conjuring the shapes of the invisible,

December work to warm ourselves.

–with a nod to Robert Frost, of course.

Florida Mirage

In our ridiculous billowing thrift store shirts,

having stripped off our Thinsulate and wool

and packed them away somewhere over Georgia,

we lower the top on the rented Sebring,

and drive down the coast in big sunglasses

like a pale segment of Miami Vice.

Pitchers and catchers report in 70 days.

Looks like heaven in February. Click to enlarge.

-

Stopped

Forgive me

For being late

It was the moon

You see.

-

Ordinary Awakening

Please click to enlarge.

Out before dawn

in the routines

of morning,

loading firewood,

scattering seed,

breathing clouds,

locating myself

in the world

with the usual

amazement,

lustful, wanting,

hungry for light.

-

Meditation on a Farm Road

Click to enter.

The intent of a gate is to restrict passage, but it invites you in.

Such is your nature, resenting exclusion, defying restriction,

To walk where forbidden, proud of the tracks you make

In untrammeled snow, a writer's urge above the blank page,

Dying to leave a sign, eager to begin, terrified.

-

Decision in a Storm

In covered light, a sticking snow, straight down, hissing in the trees,

Then night, how the wind feasts and spins, how the furnace shakes,

Then watch while darkness, like an ape's face, falls away,

Then gradually the world, the stacked partitions of the day,

Comes to each of us alone; we did not ask for this, but stay.

–Thick with the moods of Hart Crane.

Disconnection with Electrons and Deer

Each shot sets off

another tremor in the fog

the bright days shaken

from their heads like

droplets from the wire.


All of the information

on the Internet weighs

less than a fingerprint,

less than a tear.

–with a line from James Richardson distorted.

I Heard the Wild Cries of Swans

I heard the wild cries of swans in flight

When the wind died and the night was glass

And though I searched the sky above my roof

I could not find them in the gaps

Between the moonlit nap of the cloudsheet

And the stars in their order and expansion

More clear space between us now

Than we can ever cross

On our separate hopeful migrations.

-

Portal

The dead and the dying gather near us in the shortest days,

For these long nights I have left the last bouquets of summer

To wither in their vases, to scattter their petals and dust on the sills

Where memory is framed and grief reclines in the lengthening night.

Do their destructions merge with another voice and other light?

Against the dark expanse, let us bring the stars into our beings.

I would draw down the Dipper, send you the northern star.

-

Suspension

Please click for depth.

Stillness, depth, reflection.

Longing to return to origins,

Faces turned to the wavering light,

The past disappearing beneath us,

Rooted there.

-

The Way

Close your mouth,

Block your senses,

Blunt your sharpness,

Untie your knots,

Soften your glare,

Settle your dust,

This is primal identity.

–from Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation.

Unarmed in Deer Season

The volley of gunfire

has slowed in the hollow,

no stray shot has hit us,

we know when we hear it

for thunder can't hurt us.

The dogs lead me home

from a day in the woods,

waiting calmly for stillness,

pinning poems to trees.

-

Intuition

Frost upon the field awaits the sun's arrival.

Is it true that autumn seems to wait for something to happen?

Perhaps the trembling of a leaf or the movement of the universe?

–with a question by Neruda

First in December

Redbirds flaring

in caressing wind

at sunset sometimes

we know things

without speaking

it can happen

in a moment freed

from the confusions

of language trill

of a new season

breeze prevailing

through these lines

the rush against

our skin we know

it to be real wordless

winged and true shh.

-

Seduction at the End of Indian Summer

Click to better see.

This way my rational friend

a delicate snow has changed

the surface of the world

to what no one expected

and it will change us too

if we dare to leave the room

and walk the cooling ground

which never looked just so

before and never will again.

Luminists

Welcome to solitude. Click to enlarge.

Reading alone, and in fine company,

Surrounded by the drowsing woods,

The writer's thoughts inside my thoughts,

Touching that way, tenderly

Inside the world inside the book,

The world outside the world.


The universe is mostly made of thoughts.

Our faces, too, will soon be flying

Through the painted air,

Through the blue upper light.

–with lines by Franz Wright

Chantepleure

Paris

Lean against my heart sweet friend and tell me this:

How many times in a life can a man risk everything for love?

How many women can rise dripping from the sea on a scallop shell?

I am mad with appetite, foolish and sad. How much can I tell you

Before you fly? I exhaust myself, with little to show for it except

Lightning at dusk, tossing horizons, ten thousand stops and starts.

West! My mother fell in love at 83 and glided through town

Beside her man with the top down, tan, laughing, both of them,

Their white hair shaking in a red Corvette and dying separately.

Paris! Come spring I will sell the house and woods and move,

Passion beyond blame; you would come, you would.

When you stand in the sun you don't need the proof of it.

Meet me under Pont de la Tournelle when sunset floods the arches,

Hold fast to the iron rings anchored in the ancient wall as I

Press you against warm stone in the cool breath of the Seine,

Identities scattered by pickpockets to bleed in the rain,

Anything can happen if we keep writing, keep talking,

Learning the language, feeling our way, waiting to be touched.

-

The Sea Is Very Lonely

I picked up dry pebbles from the beach at Salvo

and suddenly I felt as fond of them

––of them, and the slender pine,

and everyone else there, and the sea,

which is powerful indeed, but very lonely––

as if we were all orphans from the same home,

all yearning to believe in each other,

as if what I have waited for

was just now beginning to sing.

-adaption of a few lines by Adam Zagajewski

Americana

Taking stock in pale pale light

between the feasts and numbering

of one year gone and one year next

between the black and never white

the time of gray and lingering

of poring over faded texts

to learn if this were always so

to see if I should stay or go.

-

A Finer Mesh

Is to strive without moving

 To gain subtlety standing on the hill

As the earth rolls back from the sun,


Is to float on the surface of existence

To catch the finer things in life

Things for which we need no names,


Things found only in serenity.



-

Ablutionary

Thrust deep

into the steady rain

the resting trees,

washed by sky

inside and out,

living aqueducts,

beings of light

and fertile ground,

our stationary selves,

what do they dream?

-

Pelagic

One last walk on the beach, then I hosed off my feet, rolled down my pantlegs, and drove into the interior, savoring as far north as Norfolk the chill of the Atlantic in my bones. The sea is a fervent lover, mysterious and protean, raging at the rim of reality, akin to what rages in me, powerful and terrifying, purging all within the tideline, bold and beautiful and without regret. I would risk such terror for renewal. I would.

-

Delight in Soft Weather

You may click to enlarge.

Not so much rain as collecting mist,

Cloud on the mountain, insular, quieting,

No choice but to look closely, turning inward,

Going slowly in this soft Irish weather

Some would call dull but we find fantastic

Conjuring just how bright it could be,

Telling me your dream, telling you mine.

-

Insidious Blue

36.163315 degrees N, 75.753291 W. Click to enlarge.

I forget where I am, I mean in time.

Maybe it is yesterday, maybe tomorrow.

A red glow lingers on the horizon

Like a thin strip of flag flying above the sea.

Later blue invades the sky and fills everything with blue,

And later still blue rises above us

And we are ringed with night,

Heaven iridescent like a concave pearl.

I speak as if you are here,

And I learn it's not my day but yours.

-

Ocean

OBX

It's not the charge to the beach that pleases me most

But the slipping back

The tendrils of foam and the shine and the burrowing crabs.


It's not the bells of the sea that speed my heart

But the hiss of the swash

The settling fragments of shells and the effervescence.


Passion first then the gradual unfolding

A slow eroticism

If you are meant for this, you know.

-

Could Be So

Black drum. Please click to enlarge.

Released in the bright air

The surf washes over us

And we are swept away back to our our depth,

Alive again with the whitecaps peaking above us,

We remember how it is,

The long feathers of spume flying in the wind,

The shuddering beach,

We remember how it feels,

Building and collapsing and building again,

The insatiable surrender,

Breathing again under water.

-

Lovesong of the Mid-Atlantic

Framed by water, water skyed and water grounded,

Framed by swimmers in the air, by flyers in the sea,

By undulating lines of currents and conventions,

We move beyond the zones of you and me,

Barefoot with the bottoms of our chinos rolled,

Mad for overwhelming tides

Lest we grow old, lest we grow old.

-