Postscript

 You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at you sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Last lines from "Postcript,"

by Seamus Heaney,

who died today.

While in the Valley

Gasps of the creek rising to cloud

after rain.

Faraway roar of a crowd

deep between wooded hills.

Stillness on ridges,

reluctance to speak about ends.

Meadowhawk

Ruby Meadowhawk. Please click to enlarge.

I went looking for summer

and he obliged

suspending his patrol for rivals

to land on a knuckle

and let me admire him

his geometry and efficiency

his astonishing eyes, his gorgeous scarlet abdomen,

the wondrous organic complexity of his mechanisms

worthy of a lifetime's study that would result

in knowledge only superficial.

And later over the field i see his kind flaring

in low sunlight as they hunt above goldenrod

marvelously primitive, beautifully complex, lethal.

Love is a meadowhawk.

Weather

The days are beautiful.

The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.

The other is weather.

I know what weather is.

The days are beautiful.

The sound of the weather

Is everyone weeping.

Where is tomorrow?

Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.

Today is weather.

The rain is ashes.

The days are beautiful.

Here is the robe

That smells of the night

Here is the bridge

Over the water

Here is the place

Where the sun came up

Here is a season

Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.

The days are beautiful.

—condensed from the poem "Hum," by Ann Lauterbach.

Standing My Ground

Please click to enlarge.

Whatever this is this armor of land it's my own

see these bones that will knit and this heart that will heal

saved by the helm of the crowns and the mail of the wind,


Dented and dulled the cuirass of the soul still shines

by these woods and this field returning to woods undisturbed

defending this keep built by my hands and my will.

—with a phrase by Myna Loy.

Stylite

i climb the stairs

i close the door

lift out the screen and

elbows on the sill i

breathe the breeze

that reaches me from

where my people are

that other ridge where

i imagine them to be.

Pace

Laurel Hill Creek at King's Bridge

Quicker than ever

the creek is the night rain,

quick to rise and quick to drop

(quicker than ever the oldest say)

under the old wooden bridge,

monument to a slower way,

under the steel bridge with its new deck

carrying the numerous from slope to slope,

quicker than ever,

quicker to rust.

Out of the House and into the Rain

We left behind The Amish Mafia where

she learned quilting bees are nothing but gossip,

"Just like the fourth grade," she said in disgust

and i believed her as we walked

into the woods in thunder and rain.

She hummed to the tune of the rain on her hood

by the pond where we watched the circles expand.

She showed me the efts that morph under moss,

and i knew we were in the right place.

Downside Up

He cannot stand idly

by to watch the winding

down, the season of growth

hanging heavy over

his earth, the fluttering

past of shortening days,

the scattering spoor of

the soul's radiation,

as he wanders alone

through the emptying nights

welcoming at last pale

light and its relief: crows

echoing in shadows,

entanglement in green.

Glimmerdim

Time of day

when the earth seems old

as it is and i as i am,

katydids rocking and

lighting bugs aground and

what i would change

for her voice once again.

The Stendhal Syndrome

'The beauty is still on duty.' -- Little Richard

Free from town's net of approximations,

i stand in a field watching goldenrod open.

It makes me feel faint, all this beauty,

like Stendhal, who overdosed on art,

so, steady now i say in the buttered air,

floating on an island of clouds,

the rooms of my miseries far off.

It is good i do this today.

How soon it may be too late.

—Last line used as a sales pitch by

Civil War portaitist Matthew Brady

Secondary

Click to enlarge.

When i took the long way home

through sunset roller coaster hills

the moon rode with me down the wires.

I should sail this way more often.

September Inferred

Warming again, as we knew it would,

The field about to stun us

With its most creative mood:

Goldenrod and asters and the dripping dew,

Acres glossed in silence, and the days too few.

Perspective

Pokeberry, a.m.

Live a life of truth

And you will look back on a life of truth.

—Deng Ming-Dao

Treasure

The pine and the cloud,

The oak and the wind,

Simple treasure

Of the plain running day.

The Great Allegheny Passage

350 unmotorized miles from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C.

The air moves around you

Like water over a stone,

The purified air,

Free of combustion and ash

Free of concussion and clash,

The miles passing

As if the world

Had fully recovered

From an illness

Of epidemic proportion —

Hear the wind in the trees — passing,

Hear the river over stones — passing,

Hear the fine whir of elegant machinery

In tune with your pulse and your breath —

Passing. Passing.

What the river says,

That is what you say.

High Summer

Sip from summer's peak

A lifetime in an afternoon.

Replacement

I can't stand it, watching

as the windscreen doctor

performs his surgery,

so i head for the house through the rain

and leave my baby in his competent hands

which i'm certain he thoroughly washed.

—Some doctors still make house calls. Note the continental affectation.

Too Many Snakes

Too many snakes

i began to think

even if garters

calm and laid back

until woven deep

there in the grass

a fully grown milk,

and i knew yet again

how nature provides.

—Often mistaken for a copperhead and unnecessarily killed, the eastern milksnake is distinguished by its round eyes and its black-and-white checkered belly. A true constrictor, it feeds on rodents and small snakes. This creature is an asset and should be protected on anyone's property.

Oh, That We Never Knew

To capture

the leaving,

the moment

of not gone

but too late,

is to hold

the searing edge

of living,

too painful

to last more

than an instant.

Honest Work

The path

reopened—

cooler nights.

In a few

quick weeks

this wood

will warm

me twice.

Menthol

Companionless

—time cool

on the skin

evaporating,


Blackbirds

—sky river

of going

between hills,


Illusions

dreamed in

another age,

a chill in the heart,


Fly down

to join me

in the isolate woods,

a falling through leaves,


This pull

in the chest

an awakening,

blood in the lungs.

Taken By the Atlantic

The sudden loosening into beauty,

The water intrigued about your waist,

The ocean walking you out into its depth.

—a nod of gratitude to Lemmon and Robetson.

Slugs in Love

Enlarge for baby blues.

Rhythmic

hermaphrodites

on wet stones

taken in

with a gulp

of the mind

after rain

searching

for mates,

turn back

to the glisten

of your past,

hold on

for dear life,

patience

in your search

for glorious

suspension.

The Lilly King

Please click to enlarge.

Lilies opened, as always, at his knees. No one else

could see them there, he knew, and that was fine—

this myth was his:  A pool of orange.

No magic spells, no prophets. Nothing

but the present moment. For him

it had powdered eyes.

Life is so strange, he said to them,

and as they tilted back to speak,

pollen dropped into its cups.

He heard them then in their reply:

Strange compared to what?

—adapted from Justin Rigamonti

Guilty Pleasure

Baseball fan outside PNC Park, Pittsburgh,

The win didn't wash, the broom didn't sweep,

Yet wasn't it pretty to fathom?

The thought, we agree, is close to the act;

That will have to suffice for the we.

Place

Back from the preoccupied throngs of the city

to find sun in the woods and pears in the ditch.

This world is the real world.