Briefly Noted

The inexhaustibility of the ordinary

Is steadily retreating.

Rescue the adventure.

-

Under the Toby Tree

Under the toby tree

we'll lie on our backs

watching the clouds,

we'll forget who we were,

under the toby tree

there's room for one more,

we'll breathe and we'll watch,

we'll forget who we were,

we three,

under the toby tree.

-

Greenland Is Melting

Scale of heat,

Of wing,

Of heart –

Scale of want:

Tattered wing

And battered heart.



-

Tributary

Cold and fast even in the dry months,

churned by stone and tree-stirred wind,

native fishes in the shadows,

flexing in place where their food washes down,

driven by hunger to break the plane,

nipping at the underside,

tasting the fourth dimension,

daring, rarely sated,

truer artists of the mountain stream.

-

Neon

The world we imagine,

which is the world between

our minds and the infinite,

is pure blood and pure space,

our light in the lightless void,

our being and our cremation.






-

Existential Truths Under the Pokeweed

Closer in the last surges of summer,

branches sagging over us, heavy with dark fruit,

cool mornings enwrapped by yellow fog,

burning afternoons sanitized by sunlight and dust,

in thousand-noted nights, we are sure of what's next,

but who will be first is anybody's guess.


Act accordingly in purple shade.

-

Off Course in the Ending Summer

A few fireflies

in the trees

like distant signals

like warnings

on the coast,

not this way,

helmsman,

better to keep

to the dark,

lifted by mystery,

buoyed in

each others arms.



-

Cadillac Mountain

Red is the mark of man in the landscape, Thomas Cole said. Click to go big.

No humans higher on the east coast,

In love with the earth spread out at their feet,

Embracing the universe that covers them,

Easy to feel alone in the world with just these few

Who pose for a moment and vanish again

Into the interior, swallowed up by their lives.

-

Tidal

On the bar of Bar Harbor, Maine, at low tide.

Red beyond the islands in the sound,

Red a pulse unheard on the machine;

Turn up the music,

Inland and smelling the sea,

Megabytes in time, rolled back and reeling.


Stoneman spread-eagled in the ash,

Eagle spread out against the sky,

The coast, the coast, and the old mountains,

One life in time, in time, time,

Entering the distance, both directions.

–Play Bryan MacLean's "Alone Again Or."

Burdock Ghasel

Orgic burdock, fellow traveler,

anchored in the whorls of my fingertip, needle and hook.



Clutched in the fur of beasts across the habitable world,

and in the robes of its priests.



There is nothing like the earth, except empty of men,

shining in the lack of their greed.

Pray for rain, then, on the sprouts of our lust,

sure to make minor gods of us all.

You can talk about the weather to anybody,

but only to your best friends can you mention the light.

-

Stationary Flight

Stand here at the window staring out,

the clean, blue depths before us,

ours exclusively, or so it seems,

so few at this plane we dare not miss

the other souls in flight above the gloom,

who watch as we watch, too,

another piece of cloud break off

and float into the room.

–thanks to MR for the visual.

Balance

Mist after rain at day's end,

a walk in the field with the dogs,

if they know, they won't say,

so it's easy to pretend,

I prefer it that way.

-

Remission

Bees filled their cups

deep into evening.

In the earlier sunset

crickets started to play

as they would all night.

Squander the day,

the cardinal said,

But save the soul.

–with a bow to Mary Oliver.

At Bay

I would live on an isle

in the wrack of the sea

where the ferry would dock twice a day,

where the people would come

and the people would go,

and at night I'd be windstruck and free.

–Peake's Island, Maine.

Oceanic

Bernard, Mount Desert Island, Maine. Please click to enlarge.

Bright colors ignite by the sea

By the mists and the grays and the brine-laden browns

Passions flare up in the roar and the salt

Seawater creatures hearts flaming in fog.

Red Sox Spoken Here

Enlarge to appreciate Yawkey Way

Another sellout at Fenway.

Another 40,000 speaking a common language,

Sweltering together in a Boston swamp

Civilized with sport and commerce,

Groaning in unison at certain failure,

Rejoicing at unexpected success,

Singing shoulder to shoulder

In praise of dirty water and home

Where the common dialect is baseball.

Airship

Bar Harbor, Maine

Jetstreams from the mainland

incinerate the coast.

We wished for this,

a slow somersault backward into mauve.

Did you think forgetting would protect us,

as many struts to memory as an airship,

those who would haul us back to earth

fleeing our magnificent destruction?