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.

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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.

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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.

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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.





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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.

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Perpetual

Laurel Hill Creek Valley. Please click to enlarge.

Rains end.

Fogs lift.

Close to the ground

Beginnings begin.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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