Reset to Natural

The light as it is

without amplification.

You as you are

unenhanced.

Would your friends 

be relieved?

At a Loss for Simile

Blue-gray clouds,

Green-gray the sea.

Easing rain,

Lifting fog.

And there is the curve of the earth.

Line is the main thing.

Like only goes so far.

–Last line from "Outage," by Rae Armantrout.

Aging Poet as Brawler

Currituck Sound, Duck, NC

The planet's still a little tilted

from your swing and miss,

still a little wobble in the seas

from your wild right hand,

your errant haymaker,

your desperate lunging attempt

to land one heavy blow for love in these late rounds

when from the opening bell, outclassed,

you should have bobbed and weaved and jabbed

and danced away, hoping for a split decision.

Memorial

State Route 208 west of New Wilmington, PA.

Two late dreams

Of a favorite aunt

Who lived in a dreamscape:


A bunch of us girls,

In short skirts,

Running through fields;


Children on tricycles

Without destination,

Just passing through.


At the end of each dream

She awoke laughing,

Joy at her core.

–For Aileen Cheers Sewall, 1922 - 2013.

Ovoid

Click.

How appropriate a bird

Should come to consciousness

Under a shell of sky.

So it is with our kind,

Born to fracture.

Logsplitter

The sledge

rings

at the wedge.


Economy.


Swings,

Words.

Naturalists

I am not alone

in this sentence.


Backlit

shooting green.

Spines of the sun

pierce the ridge.


Connected,

as we always

thought we knew.

Life on Fire

In the north all the live things are burning

With the flames of our own replication,

'Tis the fire that consumes us called love.

Renew Now While There's Still TIme!

Red on the envelope and i took it to heart,

Fired up the saw and worked at my pace,

Sawdust filling my cuffs the carnage

Of madness at a further distance,

The important news of the day become

The work that the wind performed on the pond.

Station

Between pear tree and hemlock,

Between rock spring and sparrow-colored field,

Between goldenrod and gravel road,

Between shovel handle and corrugated roof,

Between fallen oaks and sunset sky,

I had my existence. I was there.

Me in place, and place in me.

Solace of a Thousand Years

Please enlarge.

The woods i cherish ever.

They are calm, they are clear.

Crowds of angels on their rounds

From crown to crown.

–After an Irish poem, 11th Century

Both

One foot

In the world

You think is real,

The other

In the surface

Of the sky,

And which is true,

The grounded house,

That documented place,

Or the sky in you?

Acceleration

"Look as hard as you look into yourself" –Seamus Heaney.
(Click to look closely.)

The maple's worth a closer look today,

Standing in one place beneath its blooms,

Waiting for the wind that does not come.


Slowly go, and drink it in, and don't forget,

I urged my children walking in the fields,

And yet my end was all i thought i'd know.

Rain at Night

Please click to enlarge

Troubled by what i knew not,

I drifted down and was with her,

Her head on my lap as when a child

Saying we should do more of this,

Such a comfort being in it,

Saying something witty, kind, and complex,

So like herself, but i lost the words when i awoke,

Though i still had the warmth of them,

And i missed her, unconsolably.

Rain began at the window

And I went out to be in it,

Alone with the rain in the night,

The touch of her elegant hand,

It pleases me to think so.

It's Cooler in the Tunnel

Cyclists awaited,

at boths ends,

the tunnel opening,

alerted by devices

of the chance

to be first through,

when being first

can alter us

as we struggle

for distinction.

Opening the Big Savage Tunnel is a spring rite on the Great Allegheny Passage.

Please Remain Calm

A good day for it, sun on the ground, then shade,

a quickening wind giving pines a voice,

the emptying of the hibernacula.

They are gentle creatures, garter snakes are,

and do not threaten me, unless i threaten them:

Do unto others, you know? Garters are others.

Outside All Day

twelve in the night of the third

eighty today and the ground erupts

mayapples probing the air

frogs bellyflopping into the pond

men in their shirtsleeves revving their saws

under the dome of the sky.

Visitors Season

The day rolls in, a tide of light,

Waves of warmth and gusts of birdsong,

Crowds of visitors worshiping the sun.

Revolutions

Click to bend closer.

Afield with no devices

Being still

Awaiting amazement

Striped Scarf

The striped scarf

still hangs on the cellar door hook.

In its weave

like a perfume

that cannot be quite remembered,

inconceivable before.

for KJO'B (1970-2008)

–with gratitude to and great admiration for Jane Hirshfield.

April Comatose

Bah, you say

a cruel, brown month

 the detritus of barns

on frostbound fields

slow, slow to green

under the shifted jetstream

suffering the angst

of our own excesses

the westering hill too far

across the ice-gray valley.

Solitaire

PNC Park, Pittsburgh.

Happy to talk on the Riverwalk

Behind the centerfield stands,

Been to every opening week since fifty-five,

And not always by herself, you understand?

That has a way of happening

Late in the game

Even if the Bucs are winning.

Report From the Field

The old drifts

are retreating

into the trees

over the hill

into the quiet

that's fading

into tomorrow

Dirt Road Ghazel

Passed by the moment when

everything might not have changed.

I write these words

to stay in that silent existence.

Not the ungraspable hope,

not the consolation of stories.

Only the reminder

that there is exception.

But I cannot let go

the longing for what passes.

––Adapted pentultimate lines from five poems by Jane Hirshfield

Redemption

The frozen field has softened

and the wall has fallen down.

The wreckage of the past is not the cause.

Rake out the stems and let the new arise.

Men should be as pliant as the ground.