Seduction at the End of Indian Summer

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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.

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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.



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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?

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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.

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Delight in Soft Weather

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Searching for Starfish

It helps if we

Hold the shape

Of the starfish

In our Minds.

To  know

What we seek

Is the first step

In Discovery.

-

Trance

Moon from the sea in a warm south breeze,

Surf of the long breath, saying you, saying you.

-

Surf Casting

Duck, N.C.

We were all together once,

Blistered in the southern sun,

Facing the water from sunrise to sunset

                    believing in forever,

The blue points we tricked from the sound

Scalded to death at the end of the day,

The clatter of their claws and legs

                     unbearably brief,

Or casting all morning over the breakers,

The women well-oiled in low chairs,

The men standing at the tide line

                    shoulders squared to the sea,

Our rigs disappearing into the rearing light,

Waiting for the wild tug of panic,

A fine line between hope and fright.

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Dispatches From a Desiccated FIeld

I craved third rails, a shot of something strong
When I found out it doesn't last for long.
                                                         –Rachel Wetzsten, 1967-2009

broken aster

Sun is on the field again.

I think I see you in the wind,

But then I think I see the wind.

What hasn't happened

Isn't everything, until in

briefer days it starts to be.

We, so well-acquainted with

The night, forgive us if we

Wander toward the light.

-under the influences of Robert Frost, Malachi Black, and Frederick Seidel.

Away from Towers

Please click to enlarge

The source of the wind swung 'round to the east

and the oaks released their leaves today,

their thrilling course their tumbling flight

are headline news on this dirt road

deprived of cable, DSL, and cell,

where life consists of little things

like everywhere.

-

Last Apple

A few late midges rise and drop

backlit by the low bristling sun,

my cap tipped against it

as I read on the hilltop, looking

to know I am not alone, face hot

back cold, one crow shouting

away an owl above the bare

massed crowns, a curtain

of gold lifting in their tops,

the small dogwood her teachers

planted and her brother

replanted here when the board closed the school still holds its leaves,

its ruddy branches draped with spider lines shining in sunset,

its shadow lengthening over my boots, rising up my pant legs,

engulfing me.

-

Gravity

Click to enlarge

Like the buttonbush

bends to the pond,

we feel the pull

of another plane,

a new dimension

to the unruly fantasy

we call living.

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Standard Time

Please click to enlarge.

Sensations

bound

in colder light,

frost deepening

each night.


Hornets

abandon

their young

to the fattening

soon-to-sleep.


Man seeks

the solace of

his own thoughts,

summoning

the nerve

for solitude.

-

That Others May Follow

Take comfort

in decay,

more glory

in decline than

in the climb;

death feeds

the life

that follows.

-

Reassurance

Please click to enlarge.

Among the aged giants,

triumphs of immobility,

powerful and flourishing,

massive silent souls

with little to proclaim

except to whisper in the wind

their roundelays,

love songs, I imagine,

to the ground and sky.

-

Place Wisdom

Please click to enlarge.

Each sunset here

deepens my roots.

Deep roots are needed,

the teacher said,

to bring forth beauty.

-

On Being Numerous

There is madness in the number

Of the living.

                                 

You, still you, jostled in the cities

Among the communal people,

We Seven Billion scorching the earth,

Numbing our senses, senses evolved

To to tell us when to flee

In search of Clarity,

Clarity in the sense of Safety,

Clarity in the sense of Silence.


Me, still me, watching the fog

Crawl through the sheared fields.

When the crow stops calling

From the tallest oak,

When its echo dies,

I rise on expanding Quiet,

On the rare moment without engines,

Buoyed by the lack of human sound.

––Title, epigraph, and two lines by George Oppen

Translucent

Fagus grandifolia

Depths and subtleties and shades of meaning.

You out there, so secret.

What makes you think you are alone?

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