View from Above

High above

the appropriated coast

pewter sea

battering the

beaches and the cliffs

valleys going

bronze and the hills

in flame

peninsular ignition

a found continent

stuck to my boot

macro in the micro

scanned

hyperbolized

art at the tap

of a key.

"Paintings are too hard. Machines have less problems." –Andy Warhol.

–After reading about the Wade Guyton show at The Whitney.

-

Place

I've walked the streets of Paris in the rain,

I've stood unsteady on the Cliffs of Moher,

I've been around enough to understand

the journals of Thoreau and his advice:

Travel is a fool's paradise.

While It Lasts

Today

I could not

leave

the road

in the

on-again

off-again

rain

falling

from heaven

to heaven.

Please click on any photo to enlarge all and see each in its turn.

You are looking at what the Nature Conservancy predicts
will be for decades a "high impact" zone
for Marcellus Shale drilling and hydrofracking.

Read "The Fracking of Rachel Carson."

(click above)

-

Weathering

Weather

heavy on

the field

all things

beautiful

in rain

us too.

-

Equatorial Intersection

Moments before harvest in the sliding equinox.

At this latitude

true equinox

was yesterday,

or so I'm told,

by quirk of atmosphere

and linear extension

yesterday was

equal blue and

equal gold,

and so were we,

equal parts

reality and

possibility.

Shall we extend

celestial spheres

discovering

by intersection

which is greater

at this latitude?

-

Living in Pennsylvania

No matter

however carved up

we get

keep on

making the best of it

so what if

our acre's down

to one square foot

these worshipers

of blind Plutus

will recede

the pendulum

will swing

meanwhile

do what you can and

take heart

there will be more

like us.

–inspired by, and with lines from "The Best of It," by Kay Ryan.

Coincidence

A mucilage of leaves

becoming one, becoming soil.


The pleasures of the season

intensified by longer night.


All things in attraction

stronger toward each other.


Cooling earth beneath our flesh,

we are the warmer for it.


Amazed at the coincidence,

touching amid infinite expanse.

-

Islander

Please click to enlarge.

Welcome to the Silence Islands

where the scream of a migrating hawk

stops a native in his walk

up the valley of flowing similes,

and they change course.


Come sit awhile in the blueish evening breeze,

give us another moment with the trees,

and then we'll talk.

Reading in Bed

The fields are cooling

in the night

creatures moving

under half a moon

and in a house a man

is weighing what

he should have done

but mostly what

he should have not

the dogs of consequence

are barking 'til first light.

-

Balance

We sense it when we're still,

the balance of the equinox,

the sun rising and setting in 12 hours,


Day and night and us afloat in time,

ambition evanescing with the dew,

conscious of our brief dwelling in loveliness.


We do not need wealth or plenty,

or even achievement, we only need

gratitude for the beauty of the world.

-

Pre-Game for a Few of "The 47"

Kids acting tough, I thought

when they sat down at the next table,

ordered their beers and lit up their smokes.


Then I noticed their shirts.


Pittsburgh boys on leave,

vowing to "represent" Pirate fandom

in Afghanistan.


All honor to these brothers of the 47%

who will pay no income tax this year,

and who deserve much more

than that to which they are entitled.

-

Runoff

Three inches of rain and no runoff,

unsheathing the gauge,

absorbed by the soil down to the clay.

This living a life,

it soaks through the skin down to the heart.

Is it enough?

Forced to accept

my own limitations, my slight talent,

the most I can do is show you my world.

Call it art if you like.

-

Green to the Edge

Two-lane macadam in the rain,

flanked by the beaded flutter of cultivated fields,

by apples fermenting where they fell in the orchards of the deer,

where a man can run forgotten in the world

and imagine himself the happier for it. 

-

Transfiguration

The sky presses down

on the fresh-cut hill,

corn stubble glistens in wind,

the season is showing its age,

summer expanded and cooling.

Between the old and the new

there is no borderline.

We can't change the future,

we can't change the now,

but we can change the past,

and we do it all the time.

We must rewrite our history.

* with four lines from a Rolling Stone interview with Bob Dylan,

who claims to have been "transfigured."

Luddite

Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, York County, Maine.

Untrammeled surfaces of earth

too much to ask, it seems, in moneyed times.

Hope, then, for worthless ground, for useless seas,

and pray for all the priceless beings growing there

living simply in the lovely air.

-

Empty Farmhouse

Please click to enlarge.

Farmhouse abandoned at the end of the lane

kept open by tractors and wagons

of the farmer who now tends these fields

but lives over the rise in another house

also known by the prefix "old,"

The Old Kreger Place,

The Old Stahl Place,

The Old Faidley Place––

like that, the barn and outbuildings

used for storage, but the house is quiet

and filled with the past,

and it makes you stop and listen for voices,

because you know the past never dies,

and in fact it is happening now.

In Deep

Please click to enlarge

At the back of the field I'm in deep,

up to my waist in the opening asters, goldenrod over my head,

in with the pollen-drunk bees and the wasps,

in with the rabbits, hidden and twitching,

in with the towering hawks and their searching,

searching and twitching and over my head,

in deep at the back of the field.

Likewise

Therefore You Are

Mutable days

without and within:

I know the first frost

by the steam from the trees

when the sun tops the woods,

I feel the altering balance,

existence shifting from foot to foot

when chipmunks cluck in the afternoon shade

and blackbirds pass in a river of change,

when against the grindstone of years

the sparks fly from my senses

and I ache for the pleasures of now,

within and without.

-

Passengers of Imagination

New Yorker illustration by Victo Ngai

Sun in her face and wind in her ribbons,

passenger under the birds

awaits at the railing,

afloat on the current of days,

warmed by the light of experience,

thrilled by what has just passed,

too few in the joys of migration.

Join there.

-

Mature Audience

Taking the measure

of my inevitable decline

I have stopped pretending

that living is bearably painless.


Pleasure burns all the brighter.

-upon reading Christopher Hitchens' "Mortality"

Back to Horizon

Wood Street, Latrobe, PA.

What used to be the hill above the village,

hemlock forest first, then oak,

then farmer's field and pastureland,

then sold, no doubt, in trying times

and scribed in lots for workers' homes

above the valley mills that closed last century,

rusting now to riverbank again,

the houses sagging in their plastic skins,

the joys and miseries unchanged within,

the hill in slow return to distance.


-

As Remembered

The log truck driver

says the signs are dire:

acorns in abundance,

wasps nests built high,

woolies classic in black.

Yessir, he says,

In for a real winter.

That's what we want,

things as we knew them,

the wind and the drifts,

the heat of each other.



-

Skywalker

It's that kind of evening,

up to my shoulders in goldenrod,

walking among the clouds,

headed for the next star.

It's that kind of evening.

Just Because Irish

Moonrise in Upper Turkeyfoot, 9/5/12

Just because

I am Irish doesn't mean

I revel in grief

even if I am accustomed

to suffering self-imposed.

-

Sometimes in Matchlight

Enough coats of paint on the tin

you can barely read "MATCHES,"

made so the box slides in

with a trough for the smoking head

and a slot on the side for the striker,

a masterpiece of function, old enough

to recede, not wholly visible,

some of it left to the past,

a bit out of focus, detail blurred

by the haze of years

and the pressure of hands,

in the phosphorous flare in the dark

sometimes you can see them again.

Drift

This way, dear friend,

leaning with the wind and the sliding clouds,

let the field point the way;

life drifts,

following the impulse of the heart and the flesh alike–

the end is a minor tragedy, of course,

but that can be flicked away like a beetle on your sleeve,

and life drifts on.

-with found lines by Anthony Lane.

Jump

Walnut balanced on a locust limb

left by the red squirrels that operate above me,

risking the ground only when desperate,

and though I don't think of it

walking around sensible in the yard,

the trees are connected, interwoven, embracing,

as everything is for those who will jump.