On the 150th Anniversary

William Grant Hall, Culp's Hill, Gettysburg.

What he knew then, no one knows now.

But I will go and stand where he stood,

My great grandfather, in 1933,

Saluting what his father did there,

What was saved and what was lost

At Gettysburg.

Bodies of Water

Drawn always

to the edge

of the water,

be it sea or pond

or even a puddle

in the yard after rain,

and enchanted there,

because we, too,

are bodies

of the same miracle.

Living as Aftermath

So the storm has left the garden

Tangled and battered and in disarray.

Did you think order was more than illusion?

Storm Passing

Sudden dark

when the  boil

bloomed over us

the sky about to

reach down for us

so many

under one storm

all of us a family

disparities dissolving

we had it coming.

Jumping to Conclusions on a Dirt Road

Clicked it down into granny and climbed the old road

Which was widened this week where it turns up the hill,

An improvement perhaps for the farmer's equipment,

But the neighbors are thinking it's the start of a lease,

More gas for the burners, more loss of the peace?

Riding All Day

Mile 78.4, The Great Allegheny Passage

Riding all day

in the Yough River gorge

we find our own level.

* – The GAP and the C&O Canal Towpath form an unbroken, 335-mile, off-road, non-motorized. hiker-biker path connecting Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.,
the longest trail of its kind in the nation.

Farming and the Humanities

The men who work these fields

Rolling over the earth on tall wheels,

What do they imagine in their back-and-forth

Appearing and disappearing with the light,

and do they see these hills as canvas?

Need

Give me then

the time to earn

the simple things:

shelter, water,

a bit of food

in quiet days,

and most of all,

affection.

Oxeye II

See it as only you can.

Tell it as only to me.

Hold On to What Is Passing

And so again

daisies line the path

like every June

And so again

the mind grows its ideas

and we create

Replacing

what wears out––

the cost of living.

Ore Bridge

Stilled to art,

Mon Valley monument

to a living wage

and a working death.

Climbing into Pennsylvania

The Great Allegheny Passage between Frostburg and Big Savage Mountain. Please enlarge.

Riding high and wide into the mountains,

It's like someone coming to you smiling.

The taste of the day smells like a new country,

So fine at first you can't take it all in,

It's so strange and beautiful,

And believe me, you love to go slow.

–lines by Marie Ponsot

Primitives

Lock House 69, near Old Town, MD, C&O Canal Towpath.

Primitives,

under their own power,

sharing food under shelter,

having come this far together

in mutual caring, looking out

for each other, greeting other tribes

with smiles and open hands,

a show of no weapons

except tire levers.

Attuning

Please enlarge.

Only you in the rain in the woods in the comforting dark.

Listen.

Sighing in unison.

Under Even Light

Under even light

of darker days

we understand

all we undertook

goes under, under

the undergrowth

we rose from.

–under the influence of Marie Ponsot

Covered

King's Bridge over Laurel Hill Creek

Close enough

to the hard road

for overspray,

far enough away

for startlement

when the trout

falls back.

Vertigo

Be still

a moment

without influence.

Try to keep

your balance.

Posting a Psychic Pause

Two hundred million

uploads per day

a disaster

the writer calls it

of meaningless clarity


We look then

we who badly need

artistic satisfaction

for the overlooked

the tentative gesture

the vague inference

of light and time


A confrontation

with our own

contingency.

–Culled from an essay by V. Penelope Pelizzon. The writer mentioned is Teju Cole.

In Deep

East of Rockwood, PA

Mountain

afternoon

not an escape

only what we

were meant for

On Fewer Frogs

Please click to enlarge.

Transformational willingness

will not save the amphibians

but ours will.


In perfect harmony

we would not manage

that which we don't understand

which is almost everything.


Sometimes an idea is just an idea.

Sometimes a poem is just a Tweet.

–with two lines by Sina Queyras.