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

Walking the Beach in Quarter-Light

The dusk is charcoal and rose

with a band of midnight over the sea

that hammers the bar

with spoken insistence

temporary, tem-po-ra-ry.

-