Birthright

Prunus serotina

Great, slow

thrusts penetrate

the sky,

force of light,

water force,

force of fate

and destiny,

fulfillment

of the promise

of our birth,

indomitable

and tender.

.

Do The Inclination

The Duquesne Incline, PIttsburgh.

The Great Allegheny Passage will reach downtown Pittsburgh
this year, connecting the city and Washington, D.C., with 345 miles
of unbroken, off-road bicycle trail and completing one of the nation's
greatest achievements in rail-trail building.


"The Inclination" will be one of the new "Great Little Rides"
planned along the trail. Open another window, play this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt9cnNRCdsk
and follow along:


Everybody's doin' the brand new ride now,
Come on baby, do The Inclination,
I know you're sure to like if you give it a chance now,
Come on baby, do The Inclination,

Get high above the city and enjoy the view,
When you're ridin' wheels well it only takes two,
So come on, come on, do The Inclination with me.

You're gonna love those bridges,
Come on baby, pump up, coast back,
You gotta love the gold and black,
Whoa, whoa...

Now that we're in PIttsburgh we can form a chain now,
Come on baby, do The Inclination,
Let's all ride together above Fort Duquesne, now,
Come on baby, do The Inclination,

It'll lift you up if you're feelin' low,
You'll see the Allegheny and O-hi-o,
So come on, come on, do The Inclination with me.

–copyright 2012, Great Allegheny Press, all rights reserved.

Broadside in TIme

Blue violets

never before

so soon

and us

never before

so late

standing

broadside

leaning into

the flow as

the moments

keep coming

keep coming

Cooling FIelds

Sit with me in silence among the horizons of home,

The worries of society rising from us in waves

Like heat from the cooling fields.

.

Early and Free

Each morning early and free from entanglement

Step through the door and be reminded

That is your choice.

.

You Will Come to Love the World

He told us, with the years, you will come


to love the world.


And we sat there with our souls in our laps,


and comforted them.

–"Graduation," by Dorothea Tanning, will be the first poem posted

in New York subway trains in the soon-to-be-revived

"Poetry in Motion" program.

Mad Spring Syllabics

Podophyllum peltatum

Yesterday hidden in the leafmat,

Joining us today in our sky world,

Witches umbrella unsheathed a month 

Too soon in this month of surprises;

Some say it screams when pulled from the ground,

Mandrake, if heard, will make a man mad,

Already mad, you count seven nines.

.

The Wasp

Down out of the raftered dark the wasp

stabbed hard above my collarbone,

but that is not pain,

the clenching heart.


I lifted stone from clay,

loaded the truck until my palms

itched and my fingers swelled and my feet

filled my boots; I turned my ring

off while I could, lips going hard,

but that is not pain.


I steered for home tight and burning,

considered the decades of my rough carpentry,

lay on the floor in the empty farmhouse,

opened my clothes under the fever rooms,

touch a conflagration – desire is a piston,

but that is not pain.


I drifted into the earth's faint moan.

I awoke cool in the midst of glittering sin.

I guessed myself alone,

but that is nothing.

.

Sky Watch

Somewhere east of the Sickle of Leo,

And above the dripping woods,

Burns Mars, a brilliant fiery-orange,


And there you are.


I'm here on Earth, my feet

chilling in a willow pool,

And I'm wondering,


Is that still your color?

.

Refractive

deflection

a second

response,

through

air into

water,

velocity

slowing,

color

flayed,

this path

the more

tinged

.
.
.

.

Self-Admonition

Acer rubrum

Viola hastata

Male and

Female,

Life

from Decay;

Spring up,

my Soul,

it's  getting

Away.

.

Reading the World

Between the house

And the equinox pine

The morning star

And the evening star

Trace their atomic

Epigrams on velvet.


Our passing

Is ours to record.

.

Willow Valence

Click to enlarge.

Morning      Waiting      Under the awakening willow,

Woods going ruddy and dark      In the last of the rain,

A kind of sheer fabric      The degree of combining power

Between certain bodies      Causing them to unite

Or produce a specific effect      Upon each other,

Biol., Of chromosomes      Serums      Or the like,

Not to be confused      With chemical affinity,

Definitions gain new meaning      Everything glows.

.

Constellated by Evening

We rise

with light

as shadow

fills the fields

and floods

the woods

with night;

into the sky

we go

to  float

among

the odes.




.

Greening Run

Up the moss-padded path

through fluttering shadows

mist just lifted off the fields

countless tiny suns

burning in the dew beads

strong enough and Irish, too.

Coltsfoot in the ditches.

Jump

Startled, yes

but not afraid,

either of us.

Hello, mamma,

I expected you today:

warming ground,

first dandelions,

tadpoles fleeing my step

at the pond's edge,

intermittent sun.

So we shall accept

each other all season,

both of us with the right

to  be here.

-

Fleshed with Power

Each first ride of the year I think of Big Jim,

writing his poem in a rush of memory,

even though his son would later claim

he never rode a bike but once --

no matter -- he caught the essence of the thing:

"We left by separate doors

Into the changed, other bodies

Of cars, she down Cherrrylog Road

And I to my motorcycle

Parked like the soul of the junkyard,

Restored, a bicycle fleshed

With power, and tore off

Up Highway 106, continually

Drunk with the wind in my mouth,

Twisting the handlebar for speed,

Wild to be wreckage forever."

-from "Cherrylog Road," by James L.Dickey

Rite of Spring

Opening the Big Savage Tunnel on the Great Allegheny Passage.

Call it

man's work,

accomplished

with ropes,

with ladders

and hammers,

high in The

Mountain

Big Savage.

http://www.wqed.org/ondemand/onq.php?cat=6&id=18

-

School Bus Head-On

Engines in a flow.

The dogs surely heard the crash and cries behind the hill,

nervous, on alert, bounding into the field and back again

before I heard the sirens, then the helicopters rattling the panes,

then the highway traffic pounding down this dusty road,

gravel snapping 'round the bend for six hours.

Neighbors walked across the fields and through the woods

to see if they could help -- which is the country way,

and so is prayer.


http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/students-reactions-to-somerset-bus-crash-praised-317224/

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Awakening

Creatures of the halflight feeding in full sun,

Rabid with hunger in this strange season,

We have changed our lives.

Dancing for the Queen

A feamle worker gathers nectar. Please click for a better look.

Beedeep at the nexus

Sweet-tongued and ravening

Drone for the nectaries

Wild with her pheromones

Dying in ecstasy,

Death overcome for the hive.

-

Saved by Daylight

Daylight saved us by degrees

Pressed against the roughsawn boards

Coltsfoot quaking in the stones

So many bones

So many bones

No redeemer on the earth

If not again the rising green.

-

Dispatch from the Soil

Murderous robins are stalking the grass,

Keep your head down,

Wait for the night rain to end

And leave me a track I can follow

Glistening on stones in starlight.

-

Upper Latitudes

No ice

but a cold sheen

steals warmth

from our fingers

and chills our bones

leaving us no choice

but to turn up

the heat of our

outré imaginations.

-

Venice Obsession

Working with a "Florida snow shovel," available at the local Wal-Mart for $17.

Eureka! A small one.

A few in every scoop

here in the shark tooth

capital of the world

(self-proclaimed);

it seems an obsession,

most of the diggers

with gallons at home;

24,000 per shark,

they'll tell you,

and millions of years.

-

Homage

Casperens Beach, Sarasota County, Florida.

The fishermen

and the diggers

had left when

they arrived

to watch

without a word

the day's end

young tending

the old staying

into the night

and moonlight.




-

Our Own Devices

South Brouhard Beach, Venice, FL

Without our machines, how vulnerable we seem,

Curiosities, weak and fleshy and ill-adapted

To wind and water and sunlight and the tides,

No longer strengthened by a constant search

For food, drawn to what overpowers us,

Testing the surf just enough to thrill

At the nearness of death, at play

In the "Shark Tooth Capital of the World."

-

Orioles in Florida

Ed Smith Stadium, Sarasota, FL

The older park became a little stale,

but nothing $31 million couldn't fix.

Built when decision-makers still

had a soft spot for nature and for men,

it's pleasing now to see that's been preserved,

to have worked around an old tree,

to have kept a man's name over the main entrance

instead of a corporation's, not yet warped enough

to think they could possibly be people, too, my friends.

-

Intracoastal

Venice Island, FL

Half-a-million-dollar stuccoed boxes painted pink

and citrus green and sunrise yellow like Easter chicks

huddled wing-to-wing for warmth under the bulb,

not so different really than the mobile homes

aligned like organ keys in parks they call

"communities," clustered in the sun

awning-to-awning, too close for me,

an inlander used to hilltop views and open fields

and solid ground, not yet overwhelmed by gravity.

-

Boston Red Sox 25, NU Huskies 0

JetBlue Field, Ft. Meyers, FL

Members of the Rotary Club personed the parking lot

with its unpainted lines for the Sox fans convening

for the inaugural game at "Fenway South,"

the faithful arriving from surrounding towns

and from both coasts and from several continents

to walk the sprouting grass past the propped palms

and sit in the expansive shade of fine architecture

to watch bearded millionaires pummel college boys

proving who-knows-what but beginning again

which makes it spring, nevertheless.

-

Gulf Coast

Could be almost anywhere from Tampa to Ft. Meyers

Warm as expected,

no surprises, no changes,

today like yesterday,

tomorrow like today,

with any luck,

with any luck,

steady as we go.


-

Spring Training

Pirate City, Bradenton FL

Skill and grace within limits,

Strength and desire confined by rules,

Performance art with a factor of three,

In a world of the heart divisible by two,

And this is no game.

-

Dogbeach

Evening near Venice, FL.

Gulf view,

Deprived of seasons,

Strange at the trampled margins,

Feeling foreign and askew.

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