Company in Firelight

We built a fire at sunset

to keep away the torment,

an ancient remedy, stars

appearing through the leaves,

heat against our skin.

Lightning bugs drifted over the field,

the first we've seen of summer.

We toasted them, too, and we spoke

of those we love, here and gone,

yes, sweet sadness, yes, nothing

so fine as company in firelight.

-

Posy

Ranunculus bulbosus

We think we live in the Age of Man,

Adept as we are at delusion,

But insects actually rule the earth,

So it's time to end the confusion:

You'll forgive me my little moment of mirth,

And to give my awareness a tug,

May I never again post a photograph

Of a flower sans a bug.

-

Summer Universal

Trientalis borealis

Roses blew about us

As I led her to the river.

The horizon of dogs

Howled in the dusk.


I took off my necktie,

She took off her dress.

My belt and pistol set aside,

We tore away the rest.


Filthy with soil and kisses,

I led her from the river

and the spears of lilies

Battled in the air.

–Frederico Garcia Lorca,
Leonard Cohen, Robert Lowell,

The Rubiat of Omar Khayyam,

 and Conor O'Callaghan.

Instruction

Chin in the wet grasses,

Heart slowing,

Engulfed by the immediate,

Breathe, and the universe shudders.

-

Indigene

You could fall

with every step

alone without

a path the river

loud below

cool its mist

river in your

lungs and wind

in your blood

what has

happened

to the others?

-

Another Arc of Sun and Stars

Still here

The Apocalypse come and gone

Sheep still singing in the meadow

Fresh-shorn

Me and you still striving toward tomorrow

Reborn.

-

Late Again

A closer look always surprises,

Reminding us how we move in the world

Without really seeing.

Better to tarry and focus

Than to be prompt and live in a blur.

Choosing the Light

wild columbine

Facing the south

Flowered road bank

Sloped to the sun.

You, too, flourish

Facing the warmth

In your few days.

Of Age

First iris beaten down 

By thunderstorms

More beautiful 

By damage

Like you.

-

After Rain

In all-day rain you worked within limits.

Numbers and sums and deadlines your focus,

But the rain ended with the day,

And you left your rooms to walk the washed-out road

Without purpose or intent, free of conclusions,

Only one dream flowing into another,

Only a life of rain and rain-ending,

Only a purer existence.

-

Species

Upright and long-limbed,

Built for long-suffering,

Descendants of hunters

Who ran in packs until

Prey fell exhausted,

Exhausted themselves

through the streets of the city

testing their wills and found,

to a man and to a woman,

courage waiting to be called.

The Pittsburgh Marathon, May 15, 2011

Rest as Important as Sleep

A blue heron flies from the edge of Lost Creek,

A grouse lays another egg on the pile in the woods.

Acorns send their radicals underground,

Bagworms spin their tents in the chokecherries.

Sitting quietly, poised in our natural state,

We relax and are filled with profound serenity.

The neutral stillness of the mind will be filled

Only if at first it is emptied. Some call this The Way.

-

Threat

Fear not,

Diminishing

Queen,

Being of the

Second birth,

Gathering

Your yellow

Loaves.

This one

Hopes to

Understand

Your worth.

-

Conquered

Akenes in flight.

Now until deep snow

Are we conquered,

By seed, by root, by length of stem,

Flourishing below blades,

Two-feet high in the abandoned meadow

Above the long and bending grasses,

We are in their possession.

-

Discussion

No plan, you say, in the universe.

Yet I see arrangement.


Imposed, you say, by gravity.


And what is that?

Could it bear another name?

-

Sole

the intricate

One

on a plain field.

Nobility

in solitude.

Godlike

on the teeming earth.

-

Expansion

Stretched out upon the warming

ground in thickening grass

looking up through the opening leaves

through spreading clouds

and into the depths of the universe

endless black behind the blue

we feel the propulsion within us

rising our elements expanding

the tropic regions of our desires.

-

Clarity

Yield

for a moment

to the senses,

more related

to the clouds

traveling over

than to the news.

Postpone nothing.





-

Come Out

Pear

You smell the land breeze

after the winter voyage.

Life out of doors begins,

live things bending to regenerate.

The closer you look, and the longer,

the less you feel the focus

of this world's revolution.

-

No Adjectives of Scale

White petals,

dark leaves

in the dusk.

Basho said

if we avoid

adjectives

of scale,

we will love

the world

more and

desire it less.

-

Constant

You in the future,

listener beyond me,

know what moves you

moved me: sunsets,

rain in the new grass,

the reassurance of family,

the quiet of home,

consciousness without intention,

you of the unknowable future,

me of the irrevocable past.

–A gloss on the answers of Carolyn Forsche

-

Woodland Score

Violins are rising from the loam

scrolls first, bursting forth,

unfurling in the rain and warmer wind,

an orchestrated birth as leaves

expand above them into canopy,

a symphony and a promise

for a privileged audience.

-