Ghost Swing

Tire on a rope.

Head back and hair flying,

The echo of your laughter rings

Still in the thinning woods

As the leaves swing down,

Another layer of seasons

On the paths you explored,

Lightheaded and blazing with future.

A Few Minutes More

Reading in the theater of sunset, lost for a time

in brilliant turns of phrase and chilling similes,

i look back to the sky, and the world has shifted without me,

a few minutes unlike any other, gone forever, but then

there are a few minutes more, and a few minutes more,

and i shaill not let them slip away so easily.

The Clutch of Autumn

Caught in the clutch of autumn and quieter now

With the transient birds flown south and the finches

Going brown, with seeds blowing through the field

And all green things going to ground,

A settling now, an acceptance in the mists and vapors:

All things pass, all things come back around.

The Urge

This way out, old friend.

We may not get to where we're going,

But the going will be grand.

Indelible

She was the sunlight now,

But i couldn't understand a word she sang.

—Found in a pecha kucha by Terrance Hayes after Fela Kuti.

Asylum

Slow with the cold truth i drift

from the bee-loud field into the quiet woods,

dome going gold and shot with sky,

to the breath of new fire in the night-cold grate;

all dark solid trunks and gold-green boughs,

the forest gathers around the four sides,

guileless beauty with no self-regard,

no sense of position in a society of trees,

accepting my presence and accepting my past,

a foolish woodland man who lived his life

falling in love until the love was gone

and all that was left was the falling.

All the soft words of change change little,

and absence is the proof of it,

me and the fire by ourselves,

blue-tongued and drowsing

in this asylum for misplaced affections,

warm finally, nearly consumed.

News of the World

Chloe, four, has big news.

She had led me to a flower with a bee in it.

How do they get their babies? she wanted to know.

Eggs, my darling grandniece, like birds except

they hatch into worms, which eat and get sleepy,

and wrap themselves up in their beds,

and go to sleep, and wake up as bees.

Wide-eyed wonder for a moment, then,

"I have to tell Mom!" and off she ran

into the magic of the world she inherits.

Wealth Not Required

Click to appreciate.

The appreciation of life

Requires only gratitude

For the beauty of the world.

My Kind of Brunch

Bentley Saloon, Arundel, Maine

Pink-haired Sunday brunch singer,

swinging her hoops to drums and guitars,

swings her pink hair in the Bentley Saloon,

old motorcycles hung from the ceiling

in the dangle of a thousand brassieres:

What do you think?

Can' t think at all.

How do you feel?

I'm lonely.

Whatcha gonna do?

Gonna live my life.

Come over here. You're one of my kind.

—with lyrics by INXS

Single Track

Beach Road, near Wells, Maine.

Solitary rider,

song in his head

reduced

to a single blue note,

sails on.

In Deeper Than Our Knees

Parson's Beach, Maine

"In deeper than your knees, and you're part of the food chain." —Ocearch

No danger here.

This Maine water far too cold

For sharks.

No men in gray suits here

Mistaking Habs for seals,

Slashed only by the shadows of the gulls

And by the blades of sun

Flashing in the wavecrests.

No predation here. No sharks. Except

The silent deadly missiles of our hearts.

—Great white sharks are sometimes called "men in gray suits."

Last Days of Summer

Please click to enlarge.

If there's music it's the music in my head,

the same blue music that became the theme

to every midday walk under the unseen stars

'til years ago you stopped believing they were there

and left me talking to the daylight moon, bereft.

In twilight now we see the proof.

The stars are there. They never left.

—with lines by Philip Levine

Expectation

Trailing virga.

From the valley and the ridge

We went out to watch the moonrise

With our lenses and our hopes,

And the unexpected happened

In our heads and in our hearts.

In Another Country

Oregon Inlet Idiots photo

I am tired of being brave. Find me on the long bar

Where the sea swings in like an iron gate

And we will touch. In another country people die.


My darling, the wind falls in like stones

From the whitehearted water and when we touch

We will touch entirely. No one's alone.

—Mostly Anne Sexton.

Hung on a Nail

Next time, she said,

Two bottles, she said

 As she kissed me goodbye

And hello in one kiss.

The corks mark our joy

Hung on a nail in a row,

Each year's first morning,

Now at an end,

Fresh out of next times.

Colloquial

Please click to enlarge.

Embrace the briar, take it in,

And with it, all the color of the season,

The thorn, as well, that draws your blood,

In case you need reminding of the reason.

Mares' Tails

Wisps of change

Above us,

Wind against

Our skin,

Daring us

To dare.

Still, Life

Offered on the occasion of this 1,000th post

I see you, my fate,

Looking up at me

With sadder eyes.

Who else could

Understand —

We had landed

On the moon.

Oh, to leave it

As we did,

To leave it

Alone

Nautical

photo by J Wickens

Foundering together,

A rescue?

Cling, baby.

Leaves of Ash

The first to fall, they fell today,

Followed by a stripping rain.

But enough about love.

A Little Rain

It took a little rain for the asters to open,

A little rain is all it took to bend

The beaded stalks above the borstal way;

A cloud rose up and dropped a little rain,

A single cloud is all it took to fell

The broken beauty of the beauty in the breaking.

Temporary

I know this empty pit. It's loss.

But that is all it is. Not death.

The empty pit will fill back in.

It's only loss. The first day

After a death, the new absence

Is always the same. We should be careful

Of each other. We should be kind.

While there is still time.

—with lines by Philip Larkin

Miles through Fields

Because an ache was in his chest

He ran through light into the dark,

Breathed the scent of goldenrod

In a roar of bees with golden thighs.


The sun went down, red through the pines,

Crickets sang among the stems

Where night marshaled its forces,

The moon appeared thin as a blade,

And the night had a thousand voices.


He ran until his legs went numb

And knew he'd never know the like

'Til time and times were done:

The silver skewers of the moon,

The golden skewers of the sun.

—with a bow to a suffering Yeats.

September Nights

Hubble image of the Orion nebula

Well-met in firelight and wood smoke,

Helix doubled and visible under Orion.

Looking closer, the stars become countless.

Microcosm

photo by Larry Landolfi, by way of NASA.

What is close at hand

is also what is far away

why search all over

for what i seek

and what is that?

Last night

the Milky Way

covered me from

rim to rim how

i longed to see it

in another's eye.

Psychic changes

born in the heart

make us the same

each of us deep

in a parallel universe

ending solo.

—click on the pentultimate line if you like the Peppers.

If We Are

Please click to enlarge.

before us

is a path if not

for the need of one

for the other if we are

rooted in each other

you are flesh

you touch to be sure

there is still time

—P.H. Lotta, 1956-2012.

Not Going

 No thank you

i'm staying

in this old

post and beam

not a manse on

the hill but i

saved it myself

with my back

and my will

with this field 

mowed to yard

all its secret

recesses it

saves my life

and i dwell.

Wet Summer

One by one these days are scoured through,

things made more beautiful by use, and by decay—

a pretty gloss for what i thought i knew

when in a shawl of rain it washed away.

Assessment

Please click to enlarge.

Stand still for a moment

With wildflowers in shadow

Never seemed too much to ask,

Peace of existence magnified shared

When inner and outer form one.

Looking late to the ones who love us,

We stretch out our hands as we fall.

And Now September

Grows late

i know but

still a man

struggling

with the

singular,

swinging

on the pivot

of his

baffled will.