After Hearing The Former Governor's Speech in Acceptance of an Environmental Award Sponsored by the Gas Industry

from a law firm's ad in the program book

Money changes hands, the fix is in,

this is how they see themselves,

pitch men for the world's richest industry,

rabid for profit and in on the grab––

stand aside, rural citizen,

there's a fortune under your feet,

and they mean to have it, by god;

surrender your soul

or suffer the consequences,

the cautious be damned,

property rights be damned,

self-government be damned––

out of the way or be crushed

by a torrent of money––

sing along, you newly-rich:

water, water, everywhere,

and not a drop to drink,

follow the suits to perdition.

Back to the Sinking Sun

Shadow of the western ridge

Rising in the trees,

Wind in the leaves saying "she."

Amphibious

I won't interfere

with the watersnake

and the leopard frog,

 an order older than us

and right for the earth

if longevity be the proof;

our order, too, in truth.

Critical Mass

Please click for effect.

Memories with weight

Studies in compression

The metal of poems

Triumphs and errors

Bosons and fermions

Rusting the same

Stacked near the mouth of the fire

At the forge of the new.

Launch

Woodland creature looking out

From the safety of the forest

Beckoned by the red-rimmed clouds

Riding windward, chasing light

Across the ridgetops endlessly rolling

Beneath you, you want to tell it,

You want a companion in flight.

Instrument of the Body

Young moon a surprise

Though easily found,

Thumb and little finger

Extended at left arm's length,

Thumb on the setting sun,

Little finger on the moon,

Hand no less surprising.

Ancient Hunters

Ancient hunters hunting still


Catch mosquitos on the wing


Artists of the predatory plane


Feed on those they live among.

Minor League

Altoona, PA

Buckets O' Beer drained,


The game ends on a high note:


"Strike Out Man" strikes out––


Which means (praise marketing)


 Free Big Macs for all,


Once the fireworks stop erupting


From behind the rightfield wall


And in front of the roller coaster.


I ask you yet again,


Is this a great country, or what?

Outside on the Solstice

The unexpected world

anchors us firmly

in the running day.


What is living

without surprise?

Late shines his window in the woods

Shadowed under the hills

Where the gray owl is hunting.

He hears the woodmouse scream,

So small a sound in the great darkness.


They almost seem to know,

The woodmouse and the roving owl,

The woods and hills,

All night they move around

The stillness of the poet's light.

–fracturing Hayden Carruth

Dusk and Raining

Dusk and raining,

A lady rain, the old men call it,

Gentle and steady,

Brush strokes in the diagonal,

Close your eyes and listen,

The washing leaves,

The drip and the guttering

In the cooling night,

Mist against your skin

The caress of absence.

Bird on the Wire

Strong, solitary spirits spanning centuries

Phrased it in their way but said the same,

("It is our wants that make us poor," John Burroughs said).

We find it doesn't take much to be rich,

Peace of mind at sunrise is enough,

Yet will we wonder closer to the end,

Should we have asked for more?.

(Thanks for trying the links in succession.)

Glimmerdim

In an hour Mars would punctuate the dome,

The Milky Way would rise behind the woods,

And swells fireflies would float upon the field,

But now he walked in blue air, the long twilight

The Welsh call glimmerdim, unique to June

 At this latitude, assessing existence, the sum of his life,

Tree frogs piping, fast birds in silhouette,

Telling himself he should be content,

And for a moment before he slept

He thought he was.

Universal

Praise the long view,

Praise also the close-at-hand,

Infinity works

In all directions,

Both outside ourselves

And within, endless,

Each of us a universe.

Connected to the Senses

Kids, pups, summer,

Open fields under wide sky,

Woods, wandering minds,

The possible world exists


As you remember.

June Song

Asters rising wild and tall

Out of the wreckage

Of last year's being,

This year's thatch.


A few weak lines

Brighten for a moment

And fail, and must fail,

Giving rise to other poems,

Endless approximations

Of what we feel,


Our small songs done in the faith

of lovers who endlessly change

heart for heart as the gift of being.


Come let us sing against death.

              –with lines from Hayden Carruth's "Wheel of Being II"

Lake Effect

Lake Erie outing, 1916.

The dead loved me today,

Come from beside the lake
To this photo on my stairs
In their hats and Sunday clothes

To love me with operatic eyes,

My grandmother, narrow-waisted in white,

Pensive at sixteen, often at an angle,

Her brother behind her, thin and brooding,

Ill-suited, and the war coming,

Her sister lovely with her beau,

About to be married, unsmiling,

Thinking perhaps of her mother,

Ten babies and six living,

Thinking perhaps of the well-worn path

Between the washhouse and the kitchen.

They studied me from under their brims,
Lakelight on the tendons of their necks,
Dark eyes looking out from shadow,


The same. The same.


I heard my daughter's voice
As I washed her cheek, pixel by pixel,
Photo for the local sheet
To print with her obit,
Not so stark a task as you might think,
And less alone.


The dead loved me today.


Dark eyes. Dark eyes.

–May, 2008.

. . .

Sailing

Feet on the hill, head in the sky,

Riding a ball through the void,

Should we be anything less than amazed?

. . .

Purposes Unintended

The tracks of the storm lie on the stones

Of the path through the wet deep grass,

Paving stones from an alley in town

When the street was mud and the sidewalk oak,

Laid in the yard to protect women's shoes


Passing like weather, the walk

Ridiculed as useless by the well-adapted,

But good for reflecting the brightening sky

When the cardinals are singing the end of the rain.


. . .

Last Chance

We will watch the Transit of Venus

Through smoked glass

And not feel threatened.

The hurtling universe,

Older than we can imagine,

Means us no harm.

The danger we sense

At our backs

Is ourselves.

. . .

Native

Burdock and beech.

Also are we leaves

Nested vein to vein

In the season of our lives.

Believers

photo by Timothée Cerveaux

The history of Paris

Is the history of youth.

He links me to his blog,

Behold the photos of his friends,

The beauty of intelligence,

Of Gallic dreams,

Of faith in the triumph of ideals,

Belief in fairness and each other,

Belief in talent,

And the talent is real.

. . .

Theaters of Being

Rain in the south,

In the west, sunset about to happen,

propellers of light piercing the blue clouds,

theaters of evening in the sky,

our souls the same.


. . .