An Angle of Vision

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Nature has the most to teach.

The close-at-hand deserves a closer look.

Travel is good because you can return home.

The real wonders of the earth surround you.

Squander the day, but save the soul.

Nature excels at the least things.

All the way to heaven is heaven.

-with words from Mary Oliver, Pliny the Elder, Jane Kenyon,

Frank Lloyd Wright, and Catherine of Sienna.

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Days of Awe

Monarchs unfurl by the hour

To reign in the bee-loud field.


A man trails strands of broken silk,

Hears the rush of a river of wings.

Walnuts in their acrid husks

Hit the packed earth with a thud.

In the blur feel the tilt of the earth

As the sun pulls us back to its core.

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All Streams

All streams

Flow to the sea

Because the sea

Is lower.

Humility gives it

Its power.

Stay at the center

Of the circle,

Let all things

Take their course.

–Inspired by Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation.

With the Grain

When I bend down and study where I stand

I sink a little deeper in the earth

Aligned as I am with the grain of the season.

Looking up into the spinning sky

I float a little deeper in the mystery,

And the deeper I float, the deeper it becomes.

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Indigene

Cape Porpoise, Maine

Oars in the water and your breathing,

Under your own power and alone

In the moment, past and present one flow,

The other boats anchored and abandoned,

Your heart pumping at your center,

The summer houses vacant, their owners

Struggling for gain in the cities

In their own self-consoled isolation,

Dreaming of silence and calm water.

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Celebration

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Come rain, bend the heavy-headed stalks over the warrens,

Come wind, shake the water from the bitten leaves and launch

The germ of life across the soaked and willing land;

Lovers in the Grand Experiment, the time is now,

Want the necessary thrill of autumn in the North.

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Sink, and Let the Ground Sink into You

York County woods, Maine

"The primitive destiny of the land is obscure...

"Through that stratum of obscurity the frail genius of the place must penetrate.

"I speak of aesthetic satisfaction. This want, in America, can only be filled by knowledge, a poetic knowledge of that ground."

– William Carlos Williams, condensed by John Haines.

At the Margin

Kennebunk Beach, Maine, September 19, 2011

Struggling west to go east, by car, by train, by plane, by flowing belt and escalator, by train and bus and car again, rising out of the rain in a great arc to land in the cool sunlight of the granite coast and stand at last with the sea breeze in your face and the unceasing collapse of the surf washing your spirit, it feels like a triumph at the cost of a day.

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September Touch

In a freshening wind

We understand fruition

Better in this late season,

In the cooling evenings

We know the wealth

Of engaged senses,

Nothing so fine

As human skin

Against human skin.

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Today's News

Satureja vulgaris

First frost in still shadows when I arise, headline news here,

Small events the most important in the slow, sweet days.

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Nearing the Equinox

A cooler wind follows the rain,

the field rising and falling

in golden swells, the crowns

of the great trees shifting

and touching off a second rain.



In our chests we sense change,

and we are eager for it,

our senses aroused,

welcoming the season of risk,

thrilling at perhaps.






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A Presence of Nasturtiums

Will Hall, who lived

Without electricity

Without plumbing

Without phone and

As far as I could tell

Without dread,

Loved nasturtiums.


"Nose twist," it means, but

He called them "nasturaniums"

And so do I. Thus is Will Hall

With me until first frost.


I gather my seeds and

Give some to the boy, who

Holds a sense of blood.


Five generations removed,

He calls them "nasturaniums."

May he live without dread.

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Just Do No Harm

Amanita flavoconia

After rain and

Overnight and

There it is

Beneath the pines

Strange and new,

Another proof

Of how little

We are needed.

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Inner Harbor Warehouse

Bricks against the sky and sea,

angles eroding in the systems

of nature and its chemistries;

           fearsome the assault

           of relentless beauty.

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True Colors

Once I was crimson,

Once I was scarlet

Ablaze in the leaves,

Bold on the stems,

Vivid in dusks,

Now I have learned:

I am beige, I am dun,

I am naturally blue,

You can call it

Weak wisdom

Tragically earned.

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Seen Over the Shoulder

Asters in September

Goldenrod in August

Milkweed in July,

Looking backwards

In a clear east wind

Under a quickening sky.

The drilling crews

Are staking the hill.

Lash yourself to the

Slickening ground.

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Borderland

Stand between

Light and night

Still in the shadow

Of the hurtling earth

Fluid periphery

Where now

Turns to then

Riding a sphere

In the lap of infinity

How can you think

This is no dream?

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Ghazel

When rain falls through the trees,

It falls from a great height.



Rivers rise in the dark,

Broad and powerful and misunderstood.



You rise in the dark,

Your day is long and full of rain.



Dark and long and full of rain,

Your day is everything.

-

Erasthai

Rain on our skin

our knuckles our lips  

wet in our clothes

we hang up to steam

beside fire beside iron

kindling propped

against the tall glass

an afternoon in

our lives of sensation

unlike any other

as all they must be.

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On Outliving My Daughter the Linguist

Three years four months and six days

Since you sighed and were gone

In your thirties and me still working

And hour by hour today

With no whole word

All the emptied patterns

Of your talk come crowding

Into my brain for shelter:

Bustling, warm, exact.

You would be interested.

patterned after a poem by Roy Fisher

Orbit

The closer we look,

And the longer,

The harder it is

To be sure

Of our place,

Lacking a foothold,

Hurtling through

endless night; let us

Steady ourselves:

Cling to each other.

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