From a Dream

A few brief summers,

Then the damsel fly will dine

Watched through another's lens,

If the pond still fills with rain,

And if the other takes the time

To watch, knows what we think we know,

Sensation pouring through cupped hands.

-

Nightfall

Stand quietly

In the shadow of the earth.

Roll back

Into the infinite night.

Stand in the shadow,

Roll with the night.

The stars are meant

For sailing.

-

Architect

Sunset rainbow, Upper Turkeyfoot

PNC Park, Pittsburgh

Incapable of process

Untied to the earth,

The best we can hope for

Is imitation. 

Honor then,

Fellow latecomer,

What exists despite us,

And never forget

The marks we leave

Will all be scars.

-

Half Light

White petals incandescent

in the long blue dusk.

I would sleep in clover

were it not for the mosquito's

high performance whine.

-

Phototropic

Rudbeckia hirta

Life comes

into the world

covered in down,

too soon brittle

and falling.

Let us bask

while we can.





-

Humility

This realm

surprises

when we stoop

low enough

to be found.





-

Lost Language

Trifolium pratense, Chrysanthemum leveanthemum

Crowding,

crowded life,

long days

too short

for longing,

for sailing in

a spirit wind, 

contemplation

a language

we are losing.

-

Pulse of Night

Fireflies in the damp calm

rise and fall over the field,

and we think of the swells of the sea

effervescent in moonlight,

the wash of the surf replaced

by the notes of hylas, and we

are content to sit silently

in the dark, summering.

-

Rainstones

Barn stones, sea stones

painted by rain

stacked monument

 to muscle and bone

to line and form

to the human aesthetic

and to the permanence

we so desperately lack.





-

Pantheist

A deed in the courthouse

says this is my land,

but I feel no dominion,

only stewardship,

legal authority

to guard for a few years

these few acres of complexity

beyond our understanding,

preventing interference,

and to merely stand aside,

awestruck.





-

Balance

Petals fallen, the fruit

has little left to do

but grow and ripen,

a proper use of summer,

tempted in July

to pluck sweet syrup

gleaming to our mouths,

ravenous and thrilled

to understand the root

could kill us if we dared.

-

Accept

Accept what is given,

That which we only defile

By ripping it open

For something to sell.

What would you give

For my heart?

-

The Framework of Night

We beget joy

We beget suffering

This is the night.


Last message from my mother

I'm fine, don't worry

Live on the machine degrading,


Last words from my daughter

I love you Dad

Live in the mind degrading,


Their story is innocence

And a private wound

And an aftermath.


You don't need details

You have your own partings

To hang on the framework of night.

-

Big Red Sun Blues

Everything is going wrong
It's not right anymore
Shell and Chevron at the door

Hills can't hold their old song.

Sun is hanging in the sky
Sinking low and so am I
Just for love of what's undone 
And a big red sun.

–With lines and inspiration by Lucinda Williams.

Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobile

have spent more than $50 billion

buying up gasland in these hills.

-

Fool's Gold

This soon

More dear

Than fuel

When past

Comes 'round.

-

Existential Ball

click to enlarge

Town versus town,

as it always has been,

one day, forty thousand in the city,

the next, two score on the old bleachers,

or hammocked in their folding chairs,

or sitting on the grass behind the backstop,

the same game with children and fewer fans

yet on a bigger scale, broader,

with mountain ridges and forested valleys,

grander because from the weathered planks

you can see past the edge of the village

to the green hills, and deep into the rest of it,

which is the air we move in, dancing

in the light, lasting but a minute.

-

Gate

Our temptation to open what is closed,

to hear the melody of hinge and clasp,

the music and lyric of entry and passage,

the lure of the long path bending

into trees and vanishing into shaded vale,

the thrill of the meadow of the beasts

looking up from necessity in their dumb joy,

the wild ones fleeing before us unseen,

hope for the green hills with small space left to run.

-

Resignation

click to enlarge

Aphids gorging on the goldenrod,

the pool of bowed stalks in the rising field

under the starched blue sky

striped with the exhaust of turbines,

the burnt carbons of Precambrian forests,

life feeding life feeding life

in the usual mindless way.

There is joy in watching mindlessly,

impossible perhaps but worth the attempt.

–with lines from Robert Hass.

-

Middle English

Now goth sonne under wode ––

Me reweth, Marie, thi faire rode.

Now goth sonne under tre ––

Me reweth, Marie, thy sonne and thee.

––Anonymous, 12th Century.






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