Rapid Change

Snow devils spinning.

Why should we not celebrate

Each revolution?

Some Days

Please click to enlarge.

Grief is survivable.

He manages like somebody

carrying a heavy box,

some days too heavy,

but he shifts his grip,

new muscles take over,

and he can go on.

–adapted from Jack Gilbert.

Incubator

Warm day at

January's end

a fever on the

sweating fields,

summer's lovely

bones protecting

the promise

of cycles.

Softly

Fog softens the wind,

soft as the snow softened by rain.

If it weren't for the phone, every gasp

of defeat would be muffled inside me.

Except it's not fog. It's smoke, i can smell it.

And the water i hear is flooding the basement,

stones cut by hand, softly dissolving.

When the Snow Was Fresh

Sleet now, and ice, and freezing rain,

a chill in the upstairs back rooms.

Yesterday we could have walked forever,

swept off the cabin porch,

 rocked into moonlight.

Instead, we walked back,

drove into the city, sat in a warm room

full of strangers hiding their thoughts.

Sleet now, and ice, and freezing rain,

But still we have that to cherish.

Where You Are

In a calm between snowfalls,

He nears the cabin.

There he builds a red-gold fire

And hears his own heart beating.

If only you could.

Forgetting

Yes, I will forget it all.

One after the other. The fields I crossed.

The fields I did not. Everything

that happened. And everything that did not.

–Adapted from Vahan Tekeyan

Seasonal

Snapped from the bush as the weather had turned,

the forsythia blooms on the year's coldest day.

Ah, the white on the ground and the black below that.

Both times I fell asleep in the hour of their death,

that one who most loved me in the seasonal world.

Kindness has found me in ways unforetold.

Single Digits

The cold and booming earth

speaks its words in wind,

sometimes saying Stay,

sometimes saying Go,

always saying Now.

Fallstreak

Rarely seen in UT. 

That which descends without expectation

Supercooled and crystalized at last

Around a single particle perhaps

Interjected by man or by nature

Opens our hearts to the possible.

Why This

Please click to appreciate.

A poem, an image

would live after us,

dried flowers of expression

deep in the desicated calyx.

Om

 

He thinks

humans are irascible beasts

prone to error and lies

more inclined toward revenge than forgiveness,


Easy for him to withdraw then

into the woods and the inner world,

seeking the peace of the spheres,

the perfect quiet of the void,

nonviolence, reticence, honesty,

tolerance, compassion, good humor.


I am sorry, forgive me,

he thinks,

toasting the day with a Harp,

and the wind in the bottle goes Om.

Stoked

Fence corner.

Thirty two degrees and sleet

A lovely day for a walk

When you walk long enough

Fueling your own furnace.

Northward

Geese wedge northward calling wild

high above our concerns of the surface

stopping us for a moment our spirits

elevated by the old rhythms our heavy

issues rendered weightless in the longer view:

geese northward in their order without us.

Laurel Highlands Zen

Easy now

Take it as it comes

Let it all slide over you

Like snowmelt over fronds

If the sun makes an appearance

Today be sure to sit in its warmth

For a few minutes doing nothing and tonight

Maybe watch The Big Lebowksi again.

January Thaw

Empty of snow for the first time this year

The woods draws me in

Bids me stop

In the calm of decay

The hollows made more hollow

By the flattened ferns.


Silence takes the place of what's gone

In the woods and in me.


It's right what the ancients say:

To be filled you must first be empty.

Western Pennsylvania Lament

Gertrude Street, Latrobe. Please click to enlarge

Towns as they once were,

Workers living near their work,

 Elbow to elbow,

Striding the sidewalks in shifts,

Sadder now in cleaner air.

January Rain in Five Stresses

Where drips from the stable roof the January rain,

human history is mined from the cultivated earth,

clues to the generations born and died:

a maple spile, a rusted trowel, a coin

so dark and worn the face is the head of a ghost,

the iron wheel of a toy, a rifle shell,

the brass filled with soil and ten thousand

living things if we could see closely enough,

all signs we were here, as lasting as any,

and if our past is nothing fantastic at least

we can say that we stayed, made mistakes, but we tried.

At Our Feet

Round in the snow melt

perfect breath of the small warm things

we walk over on our way to the woods

listening to our own thoughts reminded

worlds we know nothing about

exist at our feet.

This Way

Uphill into sky,

House to woods and back again,

Passing through heaven.

Den Trees

I went to the woods to listen to the pileates

drumming on their calling trees, calling in their mates;

where chips of chiseled wood were scattered on the snow,

I found bright cavities high up in the denning trees

where soon i'd see the hungry young waiting to be fed,

and when at last i topped the hill with sunset in my eyes, 

i saw my own den there below, smoke rising from the flue,

where young of my own breed had spread their wings and fled.

Briefly Under the Sun

A casualty of winter pressed

into the softening snow

by the merciless sun,

living and dying, living an dying

enriching the planet

while under the ice

an explosion of birth awaits

the permanent thaw and the end

of what we call progress.

Snowfield

Moods of the sun and the lunging wind

Sculpt an edge to the pulses of the storm.

The heart has its layers and depths.

Rolled Back

Please click to enlarge.

Evening spreads across the frozen pond

Water with its magic where the spring dumps in

Empty trees reflected there behind the broken reeds

And in the west the day we've left

A great fire between the mountains

Burning as it goes.

Outside of Time

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Outward turned outside of time,

lacking schedules and appointments,

facing nature as it is, learning

in the living library, reigniting

our capacity for wonder, understanding

we are centers of the universe

only in imaginings.

The Second Day

Motes of sunlight floated in the sequined air

That's how the day began

Trees sharp against enameled sky

Shadows sharp against the snow

Between my feet the wind blew crystal serpentines

The world was bright and peaceful, as far as i could tell.