Muted

This is the difficult time, the time when you'd call.

We'd talk about how the sky looked at sunrise

The pattern of the drapes you ordered, now discontinued

What the dog did,

The small things that laid in a line make a life.

The snow today fell as crystal lace wheels

And that's how it lies on the fallen field still,

But there is nothing to say.

The Good Day

Driving alone as slowly as the rain

running in the ruts, i locked in my hubs

and turned up a farm road

climbing the mountain -- this kind of country

lifts my spirits, folks living on the land

as they have for eight generations,

proud, capable, and self-reliant -- up i went

because a fire was in my head

vanishing into low clouds, in no hurry

to come down, isolated, beyond reach.

High on the ridge no one knew

the cold rain was falling on me,

 the river grinding through the valley

out of sight, a fine place to spend the future,

all of it, but i came down to consider why not.

—with a line by Yeats

Wanting More or Less

Half light suits me these December days

In the woods at daybreak

To hear what's left recede,

The step of a deer in hiding,

The alarm of a sentinel crow

Taking flight in the glare above me

As the cold crawls down dumb trunks

Into the wrong depth of snow.

Heart Failure

So many of us

Striving for style

Yet so much the same

So fine an edge

Between me and you

It incises the heart

Opens the purple chambers

Clenching to make a difference

And failing.

Notes from the Stream

click to enlarge

Southwest evening slope

Body ruled by laws of place

Mind takes flight.

Staying

Under the old apple tree,

The orchard's last survivor,

Snow falls on the graves of the dogs

That never left. Here one day i would

Join them if the state allowed it,

Near the top of the hill,

Looking out across the wooded valley,

What wonders would reach us on the prevailing wind,

Loyalty always praised, sometimes fatal?

Care

The least of care

brought the stick

to bloom.


Don't mourn the

colder wind and

weaker sun

For in us there is

a burning lamp.

Near the End of the Year of the Snake

In the year the monarchs were late and few

The garter snakes awoke four months early

While the people were sleeping.

Long Dark

Shortest day

another shortest day

the sun so slow to rise

so low above the hill

and then the night

again a longest night

so many shortest days

so many longest nights

someone tell me

this is a beginning

someone tell me how.

Purpose

Left open the doors

to hear the flutter of the flame

and the scramble of Rosie chasing chickadees

running out and back

huffing with the joy of purpose

as i read poetic theory

scrawling a weak phrase or two

in a failed attempt at connecting

the inner and the outer worlds

chasing chickadees

fire aflutter

doors open.

Moonshatter

Moments of beauty and grace

though isolate

must be enough.

Flung

Closer to the sun

and faster yet

but tilted back

riding the surface

of the crenulated earth.

Reticence

I take a break from

The tricky business

Of flawed words

And stubborn sounds

At her insistence.

We enter a world

Of white and

Snowy scents.

She has more to

Suggest, it seems,

But won't say it.

—with two lines, broken, by Wallace Stevens

Duotone

Winter claims the mountains

With its own media, in its own genre —

Spare, unsparing, keen. 

Walking the Tideline

The day of her birth has passed without incident

Which is to say without visible breakdown

Except for a few minutes, late

When once more i saw the intelligence alive in her eyes

The urban wind in her hair on the rooftop

The lights of Chinatown streaked behind her in the New York night

And i cried for a moment, but other than that

I have learned to exist out of touch with the world

Walking the cold beach alone

With an ocean of memory endlessly rolling under.

I have learned not to flinch

Not inert: still.

A cracked shell. A stone.

—with three adapted lines by Louise Glück

Seeing As How We Are Carried

The older we grow

The stranger

The world, until it

Loses all geography.


How difficult

To know

Where we've come,

Unless we're

Lucky enough

To know

Where we were last.

—with title and manipulation of a few lines by T.S. Eliot.

Sailors Civil in a Gale

Even the birds had vanished.

The only other human i see on the beach

walks backwards and hooded into the wind,

her torso plumped with down, her limbs in nylon luffing,

our gloved hands out of our pockets

just long enough to wave as we pass

(a word would be blown over the rippling dunes),

a greeting that says, "What's not to like?"

and, "Where are the others?"

and, "We probably would, but we won't."

Fade to Paradise

Please click to enlarge.

Walking to the pier i see no one,

In my illusion i see only an empty sky and the sea.

The rolling sea is full of feelings.

I don't know that paradise is hard to find.

—Bowing to Wang Wei.

Cold Rain on the Surf

Cut off by intent in the churn of the moment,

The future in fog, the past beyond change,

There's peace in the chant of the sea:

Let it be, it's all right, let it be.

Off Season

The ocean is vague and opaque,

its voice an eternal unwinding of silence.


Free on the deserted beach

to move to another dimension,

sadness drifts on.

Coyotes

Alone in the aftermath,

What could be simpler,

One set of tracks,

Searching for another?

Closer than yesterday,

Howls in the valley.

Land Use

Please click to enlarge.

Stripped and restored

Around family graves,

The ground has been civilized

Twice.

Snow Geese

We look,

but we also see.

We listen,

but we also hear.

—photo by L. Lopez, words by W.S. Merwin.

Please Keep to the Path

Please click to enlarge.

The Holiday Flower Show has opened

at the Upper Turkeyfoot Conservatory,

less vivid, perhaps, than you'd expect

but i'm the only one that need be pleased,

intricate and subtle with room for the atman

to wander in the sparrow-colored field,

sure to captivate when you're still,

as it does me, returning each day

to stand for a long time looking.

No Harm in Blue

Brave but not aggressive,

By my side on every walk and run,

Happy to see me from the first and always,

I follow his path to the cabin;

He'd run ahead to greet me.


Who will tell me when there's someone in the woods?

Who will warn me when the bear is close?

Who will bring me little rabbits in the spring?


I don't know how long it will be

Before i don't step over him in the dark,

Lying curled against the back porch door.


I'm going outside now,

Where he preferred to be.


He never judged me.

His name was Blue.

Almost

Almost still.

Almost evening.

Almost winter.

Almost happy.

Logsplitter's Song

The wood pile grows with the rhythm of work,

The swing of the mall and the pop of the split,

A laborer's song of muscle and bone

While the mind is set free to wander.


I failed not only the soul behind the mountain

But also the moon in the trees.


With the rhythm of work the outer world stills,

Swinging the mall to reach heartwood.


Tell me you're there, calling me back

From the ring of cold steel in the grain.

Surfaces

Steady now.

Surfaces are not what they seem,

The pond a hole in the earth

You could fall straight through

And lose yourself in lawless space,

Again.

Thanksgiving Eve

Amber lights leading down to the poison river,

Red blink of transmissions across the steaming valley,

Blueblack snow before me, family scattered far

In our orbit around the lodestar of forgiveness.

Confidence at Sunrise

First light cracks the cold clear night,

Frost and demons melting with the dawn.

Out of the trees the sun stands up and says, "Go back."

Rain on Wet Snow

Not a day most would pick

for a walk in the woods,  but

see how the trees gather 'round

like you're among friends

and there at your feet

the day's masterpiece.

click either picture to enlarge both

World Out of Balance

Click on this caption for "Koyaanisqatsi" trailer.

Each year they fly to the mountainous forests

on Mexico's Day of the Dead

to hang in the firs by the hundreds of millions,

but this year the monarchs were late,

just a million or three straggled in,

the migration close to collapse.

Be afraid for a world out of balance.

—photo of an unmowed field in Upper Turkeyfoot last summer.

To read of the causes click here.

Weatherman

 The house is full of noise.

I keep an appointment with the clouds.

The field is full of light.

Sunrise, Moonrise

To live in the gloss of a dream at the edge of the sea,

How do you think it feels, and when does it stop?

Art comes the closest to telling, art a dream's deputy.

I can't stay awake.

—with a line by Lou Reed. Photos from the Outer Banks.

Ars Poetica

Today i cracked the frozen pond

with the rusted leaking can

to water the mums dead in their pot,

and i wrote.

Poets of the T'ang

Tall goldenrod.

My love for the tainted world

weakens in the stillness of these hills.

I go alone into the fields

at peace and lost to time.

—Reading Wang Wei

Cold Front

The chill of change blows across the ridgetops,

The border pines in shadow saying her,

The shaken oaks at sundown saying she.

Addressing the South

Stirred heavens of the south,

Home of the warm wind

And the night train,

Imploring in the valley,

Stay, stay,

I'm going nowhere.

Glimpse

I'm sitting in the field

Trying to see into the future.

Even a look at this evening would help.


It's useless.


All i can see is the wind shaking the weeds,

And the light sliding on their stalks,

And the dry seeds freed.


That will do.

Traditional

The dog and i, we lope toward the trees.

The low careening light presses on our backs.

My mind's not right.

In the dying city, does the gasping water wind

Press its fingers to your neck?

Has the lake begun to freeze?

—with a line by Robert Lowell.

Walking Until Dark

Cold, quiet

consolation,

the early dark,

going only

where my legs

will take me,

doubling back

on my own

frozen tracks

under a few

sharp stars.

Lingers

Please click to enlarge.

Two-fifty a.m.

Still the south at sunset

Cools behind the hill.


We are all swimmers

On a sea of sorrow.

The Happiness of Edzéard Bouffier

A still from the animated film "The Man Who Planted Trees."

He lost the habit of speech,

the man who planted trees,

working alone after loss —

so it is imagined, written, and drawn.

I believe it could happen,

doing your life's work in silence

and living alone,

yet you never can lose

the habit of thought,

which may not be speech,

 but it's language.

To watch the moving "The Man Who Planted Trees" (30 min.), click here.

Young Oaks

Praise the protected understory

where youth in scarlet reigns

even into early snows,

clinging fast as if the season

of death were a brief inconvenience.

We remember scarlet strength,

but we were lighter then,

and lived as if within forever.

—with a line from Updike's "Endpoint."

In Its Own Time

Leaves the wind

has ushered to

the cabin porch

i will not sweep

just yet.

Why not keep

as much of fall

as we can get?

As We Like It

In Pennsylvania then,

the past had settled in

to be the present.

Nothing greatly changed.

—from John Updike's "Endpoint."

Flight 2646

The curtain of day lifts in the cold woods

And night fills the void––

How it is

When my light flies away behind hills.

The Sky Is Not Enough

Another sunset of the dramatic sort this week,

Garish, the blooming light, it seems to me.

The sky can only give so much before

We fade at dusk for lack of loving touch.