Surfaces

Steady now.

Surfaces are not what they seem,

The pond a hole in the earth

You could fall straight through

And lose yourself in lawless space,

Again.

Thanksgiving Eve

Amber lights leading down to the poison river,

Red blink of transmissions across the steaming valley,

Blueblack snow before me, family scattered far

In our orbit around the lodestar of forgiveness.

Confidence at Sunrise

First light cracks the cold clear night,

Frost and demons melting with the dawn.

Out of the trees the sun stands up and says, "Go back."

Rain on Wet Snow

Not a day most would pick

for a walk in the woods,  but

see how the trees gather 'round

like you're among friends

and there at your feet

the day's masterpiece.

click either picture to enlarge both

World Out of Balance

Click on this caption for "Koyaanisqatsi" trailer.

Each year they fly to the mountainous forests

on Mexico's Day of the Dead

to hang in the firs by the hundreds of millions,

but this year the monarchs were late,

just a million or three straggled in,

the migration close to collapse.

Be afraid for a world out of balance.

—photo of an unmowed field in Upper Turkeyfoot last summer.

To read of the causes click here.

Weatherman

 The house is full of noise.

I keep an appointment with the clouds.

The field is full of light.

Sunrise, Moonrise

To live in the gloss of a dream at the edge of the sea,

How do you think it feels, and when does it stop?

Art comes the closest to telling, art a dream's deputy.

I can't stay awake.

—with a line by Lou Reed. Photos from the Outer Banks.

Ars Poetica

Today i cracked the frozen pond

with the rusted leaking can

to water the mums dead in their pot,

and i wrote.

Poets of the T'ang

Tall goldenrod.

My love for the tainted world

weakens in the stillness of these hills.

I go alone into the fields

at peace and lost to time.

—Reading Wang Wei

Cold Front

The chill of change blows across the ridgetops,

The border pines in shadow saying her,

The shaken oaks at sundown saying she.

Addressing the South

Stirred heavens of the south,

Home of the warm wind

And the night train,

Imploring in the valley,

Stay, stay,

I'm going nowhere.

Glimpse

I'm sitting in the field

Trying to see into the future.

Even a look at this evening would help.


It's useless.


All i can see is the wind shaking the weeds,

And the light sliding on their stalks,

And the dry seeds freed.


That will do.

Traditional

The dog and i, we lope toward the trees.

The low careening light presses on our backs.

My mind's not right.

In the dying city, does the gasping water wind

Press its fingers to your neck?

Has the lake begun to freeze?

—with a line by Robert Lowell.

Walking Until Dark

Cold, quiet

consolation,

the early dark,

going only

where my legs

will take me,

doubling back

on my own

frozen tracks

under a few

sharp stars.

Lingers

Please click to enlarge.

Two-fifty a.m.

Still the south at sunset

Cools behind the hill.


We are all swimmers

On a sea of sorrow.

The Happiness of Edzéard Bouffier

A still from the animated film "The Man Who Planted Trees."

He lost the habit of speech,

the man who planted trees,

working alone after loss —

so it is imagined, written, and drawn.

I believe it could happen,

doing your life's work in silence

and living alone,

yet you never can lose

the habit of thought,

which may not be speech,

 but it's language.

To watch the moving "The Man Who Planted Trees" (30 min.), click here.

Young Oaks

Praise the protected understory

where youth in scarlet reigns

even into early snows,

clinging fast as if the season

of death were a brief inconvenience.

We remember scarlet strength,

but we were lighter then,

and lived as if within forever.

—with a line from Updike's "Endpoint."

In Its Own Time

Leaves the wind

has ushered to

the cabin porch

i will not sweep

just yet.

Why not keep

as much of fall

as we can get?

As We Like It

In Pennsylvania then,

the past had settled in

to be the present.

Nothing greatly changed.

—from John Updike's "Endpoint."

Flight 2646

The curtain of day lifts in the cold woods

And night fills the void––

How it is

When my light flies away behind hills.

The Sky Is Not Enough

Another sunset of the dramatic sort this week,

Garish, the blooming light, it seems to me.

The sky can only give so much before

We fade at dusk for lack of loving touch.

Navigators

So many closed hearts.

To tell you the truth,

I understand no one.

Above the clouds all afternoon,

 Geese called in wedges.

Death is immense.

Indigenes

Gazing east through noon,

Copse of ash a grid

Upon the pouring sky,

Sky a flux upon the ground.

Running through our fingers,

Menthol in our lungs,

Sky becomes the brilliance in our blood.

Walking with Milosz

Beside the stubborn oaks

I wade the tree line with Milosz,

Seeds on our sleeves, gossamer across our faces,

Removed from the fairground of the world,

Away from the shouts and drumbeats.

What a relief. To be alone with my meditations

Beside the stubborn oaks.

—with lines by Ceslaw Milosz

Ballast

"Wildly expected, if you will,

cataclysm."

Things i'd say, am saying,

to persons no longer present.

Yards away the dun pines

shake down their needles.

"Oh, please, yes," to all of it.

If you watch me from

increasing  distance,

i am writing this always.

—Manipulated poem by Rae Armantrout with original stanzas.

Ten-Acre Cosmos

Dark may be the universe, all that we see

Only a froth on an ocean of invisible stuff.

But in our field we watch the galaxies of green

 Curling in their dessication, hardening to browns,

Their countless seeds carried on the wind

And passing poets, like astronomers,

Standing on the brink of great discoveries.

—with the words of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson italicized.

Save Yourself

Breath deeply against

The glare of final things.

They burn in your chest.

November Tanka

Please click to enlarge.

Ladder leans against the barn

in the cooling afternoon.


Snow will light the night.


Wheeling crystal oracles

pass the darkened moon.

The Longer the Less

Turkey-tail. Click for a closer look.

A stranger, more complicated world

Opens itself to us as we age.

Oh, it's been there all along, of course.

Distracted by thrilling and vivid,

We just never noticed when we were

Young enough to think we had things pegged.