Pink at Last

Moments before last sunrise of the year

last day beginning pink in the frozen mists

grounded and in flight, days to years to eons,

what time makes of us we have come to understand,

grounded and in flight, moments before last.

Staying Home

Roofs through trees.

Insular snow

year's clatter subsiding

warm under roofs

in the company of friends

we put away our devices

this is the real world.

Mouse Story

Click to enlarge.

In new snow we learn of the white-footed mouse

up from the warmth between weedthatch and drift

to wander the surface in moonlight

pausing to dine upon goldenrod seeds

before leaping away in common panic

or perhaps in uncommon joy,

we can decide:

either the flight of the merciless owl,

or the furred pleasures of its own kind,

depending upon our ultimate mood

and the strength of our need to conjure an end.

Hit

Nothing could be done,

they stopped the truck and stood in blowing snow,

the girls crying and talking

to the damaged, frightened animal,

but nothing could be done.

Their tracks were alone in the drifts,

the wind moaned in the woods;

under it all the earth was soft and moist,

yellow clay stuck to the shovel

and froze on the blade.

Beneath the twisted apple tree

the mound is surprisingly high.

Ashes and bones,

ashes and bones,

thus do i civilize the field.

Slingshot

Fire in the snow as the year turns

against the cold and the ice in the ground

against the fear and the ice in our hearts


We've whipped past our star once again

and we haven't lost faith in the goodness of man

not completely


Launched by the gravities into the silence of space

and so by the gravities shall we be returned

to our orbit and order.

Breaker

The snow lies blue and unbroken.

Desperate to save himself

from the spin of their devices

he throws the main,

motors die in sighs,

the house holds its breath,

and in the quiet cooling dark

he believes her.

Slowing

Fire in

the stove

smoke in

the flue

powering

down to

my own

dormancy

hoping

to begin

anew.

Reassurance

There are things

we live among

that hold us still

primary singular things

the reed under snow

the post in the water

the sky the flat sky

we believe in light

the feather on the pond.

We are always wrong

you about me

me about you

though the things

we live among

are right

and to see them

is to know.

The Road

Nightfall at the end of autumn.

Shines with rain

soon ice

soon snow

soon drifts

unbroken dunes

with any luck

too deep for trucks

a realm of silence

slowing the quickest day

until the township plow.

Storm Warning

Please click to widen

Skyline where tomorrow makes its stand

subtle as the storm begins to brew

i ask for nothing but to watch the woods

fill up with snow in the company of dogs

and other loving souls too few who think

they know me as i am and will be still

safe and free to ache in the bliss of the blizz.

So Sudden, So Fierce

The woods exposed for what they are

most of the time

yet we think of them

in leaves.


In the dark we recognized each other.


Now with old age nearly beginning

do we dare confess

even to the smallest joys

as their disappearance approaches?

The Early Dark

Afield in the rain in the early dark

an easy rain tapping in the early dark

tapping overhead in the early dark

soaking us through in the early dark

the death of a child

the death of a child

afield in the easy rain tapping.

Steadied by Home Despite Mayans

It may seem that time is coming to an end

if we let ourselves give in to fear.

Lucky for us we live in a world of seasons.

We can spend the day in the comforts of home,

and it would be wrong to think what we felt there

was somehow shrunken or partial

just because we never left the yard.

Here, too, is the grandeur and splendor of the world,

time circling back on itself, hungry for its own tail.

–with clauses adapted from Louise Glück

Relentless

The next system moves in

dispassionate and unrelenting

for that is the nature of time

breaking over us like a great wave

leaving us gasping at what we do to each other.

The past is happening even now.

We Must

Act.

A Promise of Geminids

A quieter morning

for the ice,

frost runing off

with the shadows,

hard cold facts

evanescing in light,

a pigment-dyed sky

promising meteors

over the hill.

She was like that.

In memory of Kelly Jean O'Brien

on the 42nd anniversary of her birth.

The Sound of Water

Please click to enlarge.

The dogs listen in the wetland

under the thatch where the live things move

under new snow were the spring moves

on its way to the rill in the woods

on its way to the creek in the valley

on its way to the river on its way on its way

to the bay and the sea and the mixing currents

of the planet on its way 'round the sun in the spin of forever

when we listen close enough we can hear it too for awhile.

-

Nearly Night

Nearly night

Birch and water nearly bright,

Wandering the fields in rain

Rapt in a story he won't tell,

An old refrain of foolish love

Of leaping up and falling back.


Sleep well dear friend

And let him be.

The leaping up, you see,

The half he most forgot,

That was happiness.

–with an observation by Louise Glück

Words for Deaf Ears

The world is sacred.

It cannot be improved.

Treat it as an object,

and you'll lose it.

– 3,0000 year-old wisdom from the T'ao te Ching.

-

Consumed

Evening creased by enterprise

scarring sky and riddling the hills

née heaven and née earth

burning up the only world we know

our needs will become baser by and by.

-

Driving in Fog

Please click to enlarge.

Fog grows out of the valley

reducing the world to near distance

my fears and my confusions

approaching in wraithlike procession

reminding me how little

i really know for sure

and how long that lasts.

Easy now, i tell myself,

you're more than halfway home.

Stay calm. Keep going.

-

Manual Labor

Mantel

Hammered chains

nose ring forged of broken bolts

the blows cold in the melding

the hammer itself

up from cinders deep in the ground

worked by the next young man

fired by an idea of a life

ringing in his bones.

-

Injured Pride

The day's organized events

drag their tails across the pond

slinking through the haze of twilight

the universe as it is

descends

floods these valleys and these hills

embracing me       my self-respect

a blaze

against the conformity of night.




-

Ohm

very well then

i embrace my irrelevance

the goal is to float on the current

no longer seeking to hold or to reject

can you feel the hum of dusk?

-

Unamerican

Today again

i neither

drove nor spent

instead i walked

the wooded hill

where midday sun

melts midnight snow

i watched it happen

and so in solitude

i reached my

own conclusions.

-

Crows Answer

Will it be worthwhile,

the walk i mean,

leaving the warm house

for the chilled silences?


Crows answer,

the hollow echoing

with ayes.

-

Shopper

Unnatural

cold wind in a dim vague howling

artificial sheen over the hollows and voids

we seek to fill through consumption

filled at last in our return to the woods

and the few light lives grateful for a handful of seed.

-

Omen

I rode to meet you: dreams

swarmed around me

and the moon on my right side

followed me, burning.


I rode back: everything changed.

My soul in love was sad

and the moon on my left side

trailed me without hope.


To such endless impressions

poets give themsleves absolutely,

making omen of mere event,

until the world reflects

the deepest needs of the soul.

–Louise Glück, after Pushkin.

Slow Eloquence

In waning light

a sharper view

a clearer path

in waxing moon.

-

Thanksgiving

Ancestors, 1920.

In the comfort of the living

we commune with the dead.

They are still here.

Just listen.

-

Getting On

Getting on

with the next thing in your life

puzzled by a sense of unease

perhaps because memory

has entered it like a spike

you sit for an hour in the woods

watching the sun in its low arc

moving behind the trees

reflections and voices passing through you

until you find again your place in the world.

-

Saturation Zero

Style over content

is decadent

Color over form

superficial

Grays truer

to the fluid phantoms

of the inner life.

-

One-Sided Argument

a.m.

It is not the sun, I tell you.

It is these clouds

lighting the hill.

-

Bravery of the Stationary

tenor of wind in bare branches

shadows swing 'round the hill

courage it takes not to move

strength in standing your ground.

–unswayed by the Range Resources attack on Rep. Jesse White.

All The Energy We Want

Morning frost in the shadow of the woods. Please click to enlarge.

Give us the energy of the sun unbridled,

the energy of ice and wind unharnessed,

the energy of cellular division

of lives contented where they live,

the living you, the living me.




–in reaction to Department of Environmental Protection Secretary's statement that Pennsylvania can become an "American energy superpower" through hydraulic fracturing, which does not sound like environmental protection to me.

Meditation

Slower now.

Awaken.

-

Kitty Hawk

Morning on the Outer Banks after the storm.

At odds with men

the soon-to-be great

poet Robert Frost

young and sick in love

faced despair alone

in Kitty Hawk:

"With a need the gale

filled me with to shout...

...there's no knowing what

love is all about...

...but that night I stole

off on the unbounded

beaches where the whole

of the Atlantic pounded...

...then I saw it all."

–for the full poem, click here.

Giving Ourselves to the Earth

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

–from Frost's "The Gift Outright," offered in support of

 those protesting hydrofracking in Lawrence County, PA.

Pulled to the Center

Deaths of summer drawn to the center

of the earth by the forces of attraction.

Meet me there.

-

Harvest as the Front Moves In

Gun again. Gun, gun, gun.

Now the hunter shows his back, kneels bright

in sparrow-colored weeds, busy with his blade.

Now carries by hind legs the limp orange fox––

cavity black-red, hairless tail, mangy snout.

––Many foxes around here?

Tall, frames aslant, mustache thin.

––Naw, only thing like it I ever saw.

Dusk collapses into woods, gasping.

-

Western Pennsylvania Barn

Space confined as if in the mind

the thought of a barn

where the wind turns sideways

to get in and lies down

where the day moves over the planks

at the speed of the spin of the earth

animals breathing beneath you

weather wrapping around you

the ingenuity of men

written in the cuts of the adze

and suspended in the quiet air

where the past lingers

for as long as the barn will stand.

-

Weathering

Slipping

into spareness

each awakening

finding less

each morning

a subtraction

still enough

still enough

we had so much.

-

Small Universe

Sunup to sundown

feet on the ground

grateful to be

going nowhere

at home

in the everywhere.

-

Post Drama

Peace on the fields

flattened by snow

hard enough now to walk on

Peace in the trees

empty of leaves and full of sky

where the wind slips past

Peace in the mind

listening for answers in the old woods

listening for answers in the older poets

Finding them closer than thought.

-

No Symbol

At night, toward dawn, all the lights of the shore have died,

And the wind moves. Moves in the dark

The sleeping power of the ocean, no more beastlike than manlike,

Not to be compared; itself and itself.

–Robinson Jeffers

Works

High tide

leaves something

of itself behind,

proof that

it was there.

Tradesmen

and artists too.



-

Wing

Turning soon

to press against

the air

poetic transformation

of reality

you may cry out

but there will be no talking

intellect

in the world of going

some things seem important

not to know.

Standard Time Abstract

Look how we stand

and stare at the sea

alone with our minds

in the high definition

of late afternoon

more about leaving than being.

-

My Nature

Please click to enlarge

The sea moves

under the skin of night

secrets move

deep in the blood of the sea

the blood in my heart is the sea

my secrets the wrapping of night.

-

Imagists

Yes

it is enough,

astonishment

at the mineral fact of the world.

–with a line by G. Oppen