Cruel April

You who cursed the snow,

Welcome to the muddy pause before the greening,

Gunfire ripping through the valley,

Semi-automatic,

Dun hills above the fields manure-stained,

 And through the empty trees,

A tower strobing new,

Night no more the dark unprofaned.

Witness

South. Nothing at first.

In the dissolving day we watched the sky,

Seeing nothing at first — clouds, hill, the usual masterworks,

A few birds in silhoutte against the evening south,

And a few more, then more, robins by their bark, arriving

From the south in a steady wave evenly spread

From rim to rim, hundreds, maybe thousands, in their

Pulsing, wind-blown migration, low light on their chests,

On the woods at our backs, and on us, illumined.

Tempted

The surprise of an overnight snow

the sight of the pure and trackless path

would tempt us to begin life again

you could call it magic

whatever it is

wherever you are

—with two lines from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1853.

Day Untitled

a slower day began

with robins at attention in the grass

evolved to rain upon the pond

as finches turned to gold

and ended with a letter to a friend

much was accomplished

Everyone Has

Everyone has a heartache,

we know because we read poetry

in the wind-loud woods at the end of March

in a spiral of dead leaves and wild

vines swinging from circling crowns.

All this booming and creaking unnerve us.

We think constantly of going but

the wind has the voice of command

and the wind asks, Where?

and the wind asks, Why?

and the wind repeats,

Everyone has a heartache.

Becoming

The longer you look, the more beautiful it becomes. Expand and enjoy.

Crossing through the woods

Preoccupied

With time's slide and mine,

I am stopped by the mystery of earth,

Ever closer to the end of the cycle,

And to the next beginning.

Solitaries

Unlike sixty years ago

i've come to understand

how little we can know

about each other, 

i mean important things like

what's in each other's hearts,

and are they broken, damaged,

full? What would you say,

and would it be the truth?

So who's to blame? Best then to assume all that's the truth, all that.

All that, i've learned, we understand. Because we are the same.

Vanishing Point

The sky is my escape,

Swept along by a beam and a wisp

Riding high over the shades of a surface in conflict,

Forty-five helium balloons tied to my lawn chair,

Happy in my webbing, the tracks of my foolish ways

Shrinking beneath me to nothing,

Up where the oxygen thins, the open unmined air

So peaceful, pure altitude,

Leaving the coast with a frozen smile

Over the curve of the sea

And never coming down,

Riding to heaven,

A clean getaway.

Inspired by the 1982 flight of Larry Walters, who tied 45 weather balloons to his lawn chair and, armed with a BB gun for his descent, rose to a height of 16,000 feet. "I love the peace and quiet," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. In 1993 Walters hiked into a remote spot in the Loa Angeles National Forest and shot himself in the heart. His chair, lost for 20 years, resurfaced this month.

Magic

Do i believe in magic? Last year the mallard pair was torn by something hungry in the night. The hen lived a week, wounded, but strong enough to feed on what i spread beside the pond, and strong enough to run, limping, dragging a wing, until the cracked corn went untouched, and i found her in the wetland, more loam than bird. No magic there. But yesterday a ripple on the water caught my eye, and there they were. Ask me again.

Sunset Kingdom

A talent for abstraction stays the sting

Of aging, death, and unrequited love,

The day that ends and never comes again

Becomes the sunset filtered through the limbs,

Elements of fire and endless night

Quaking on the surface of the pond,

Wind and water and the craving heart

Media for art in dying light.

Sunday Paper

Click to be observed.

Deep thinking,

Birch logs popping in the grate.

The dog that wanted out wants in.

If only she would learn to read.

Ours

Day with its palm against the boards,

Wind in antiphony on hills.

In Lengthening Light

Please enlarge by clicking.

A ragged beauty in the ruins of a year.

Step lightly, as if adrift,

Afloat on the acceptance

That dissolves fear.

Green hope!

Tones

Upper Turkeyfoot sunset, 3.20.14

More mood in shades of grey

As we have discovered

In our stimulated life.

Nolo Couplets

Casselman River from Pinkerton High Bridge, Great Allegheny Pasage. Click to expand.

Once i was a man,

I fell in love.

Against my better judgement,

I allowed it to happen.

Then i was not a man,

I was the earth.

Pour me a glass of water,

Once i was the sea.

–extracted and adapted from James Longenbach's "Climate of Reason"

WInter's Last Fling

Turn slowly, heartbreak.

You called on Night to fall

and here it is: an atmosphere

of shadows saturating the township,

bringing peace to some, to some.

The dying sun lies down

to sleep under a bridge.

Listen, my dear:

Gentle Night approaches,

a long, dark shroud

trailing toward the east.

—adapted from Baudelaire's "Reflection."

Gallery

Right of avant-garde

too deep in authenticity

to trust in novelty or fad

i give you weeds in melting snow.

An oven bird raps its hollow gourd.

Crows croak from copse to copse.

Friends of a quiet afternoon

watch with a sympathetic eye.

Declaring Winter's End

So here is the

last of it then

the last path

to open and

the last gulph

to close

between the

mind and

the world

when eros

and art are

the same.

Meditation at Sunset

West and east atop the ridge

in flowing capes of wind

how difficult to stay still

in this rolling universe

of perpetual change

and how worth the effort.

Indigene

Too close unsettles me,

into the eyes of a creature

more at home under the sky

than i can ever be,

a truer native of the earth,

this foreign latitude.

Drop

Before the rain before the steam

before the shivering dog

and the snowburst

there was the tall wind

there was the calling bird

there was the sliding sky

and you who witnessed all of it

you remember how it was

you must try to say.

lowly elevation

all day listening to the wind in the pines

pair of redtails turned above the spire

snow withdrew from fields

waiting for bluebirds in vain

instead i saw the worms emerge

no less privileged

Goal Oriented

i went to town and i came back

placed the cartons on the shelves

checked the money in the bank, egad,

fed the dog and fed myself

and left the house again

determined i would live another day

modestly the dog and me

to watch the disappearance of our tracks

from field and woods

 and following her lead, do what Rosie does:

lift my head and breathe the wind and fill myself

with the rich sensations of the present.

Amble into Everything

Each step a collapse

half a foot of wet sugar

over a two inch crust

over half a foot of shaved ice

keep moving

one foot in front of the other

keep the ball spinning

the dirty snow passing under you

you staying in one place

there behind your eyes

riding your mechanics

a beast on a ball in a circus

your arcs and short circuits

moving your components

in a rhythmic whir and thump

one foot in front of the other

the planet turning under

you riding into is.

March Unplugged

Disconnected from the world

A universe in yard and field


Wobble of the open water

Creaking of elastic ice


A subtle change from yesterday

Testing the periphery.

Sugar Water

North wind across the snowpack

Marrow-chilling maple season

Late this year but soon enough

My fingers ache where long ago

I pushed a wire through numb flesh

Clearing ice from the elder spile

And hard against the bone.

Forty years––

 Some injuries will never heal.

That one barely qualifies.

Warriors

Ft. Myers, Florida. Click to expand.

You sense their strength when they run past

uniformed and kicking up the dirt,

and something primitive as well,

painted clubs in hand,

bearded warriors in their prime

bent on striking hard with speed

and wild for triumph.

Call it sport, this honing of the skills

to feed the tribe, to win the war,

a civilized ferocity.

Even as the Feckless Sun

Even as the feckless sun

drops behind us and our shadows

stretch to the eastern horizon,

we feel the dark pour in,

we feel the cold come down,

winter rising up to stand

towering above us

into the clear black night,

sharpening the stars.

The dark presses on us from above,

our own weight presses down

against the frozen ground,

we are all out in the cold,

we are all so far from home.

—with lines from "The Visible and the Invisible," an essay by Howard Tharshing.

Cabin

there's a place where i go

to consider the might-have-been

the one towering change

the other life that might-have-been-had

a place where i go

flame in the stove and snow floating down

to appreciate anew

this living memory as art

the might-not-have-been-had

—with two lines from a letter by Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop

Treeline

Please expand by clicking.

The old guard at the edge of the path

Where the woods opens up to the field

Under the shadow of windless snowfall

A gray dusk in the heart of the day

Finding peace in the comfort of age

As much permanence as we are likely to know.

to begin again

this morning in the calls of birds

i heard the season change

though the air is restless and the day

feels more like a suspension than an end

or a beginning

a walk on old collapsing drifts

discourages -- snowshoes still are needed in the fields

but we've come this far and won't give up

so long as we have firewood under roof

and strength tomorrow.