Wandering Off

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easy to get lost

in this beautifully honest

intricate world

by choice

Go, and Leave It There

Bear Run

healing deep in the laurel

healing in pure water

in tall oaks and slick stones

healing in the veins of cooler air

coursing through the crowns

healing in the late calls of birds

and in the stars appearing

healing in the strength of those

who love us back tenfold

Going to the Center

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we pause upon the little dramas of the day

and we are filled

we sense the spinning center of our lives

and it is shared

Bounded

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we seek the divine in our own way

just now i find it in an unsprayed fenceline

and in the sky behind it bordering the road

 that leads me home

no one lives my life but me

boundaries imagined

River and Valley

for a long time i stand in light rain looking across the valley

listening to the sound of the river deep in the valley

rushing over stones smoothed by the river

rushing through the valley for a long time


the river flows on without returning

this is the one river of night and day

and i am an apparition of light

unable to resist looking across the valley for a long time


evening folds into itself and night rises behind me

spreading its cloak over the valley

where for a long time the river rushes over smooth stones

and even a long time is not long enough

—with 3.5 lines by W.S. Merwin

A Deepening

deep enough now to hide in

the field awaits

clouds slide by in mutation

the sun in its arc rises and falls

a thousand creatures

go about their business

all within reach

hear what i'm saying

all within reach

Grand Coincidence

to be alive with you

on this same place

hurtling through space

is so startling

it leaves time for little else

hold fast

—adapted from a line by emily

Instinctive

Fireflies and stars. Please enlarge by clicking.

the forked river of heaven connects us

tonight it flows around me in the field

i hold my breath

One to the Other

thank goodness

thoreau wrote

they have not

learned how

to cut down

the clouds

meet you there

Solstice with Fireflies

night at its ebb

but longer nights to come

day at its peak

but shorter days to come

all of life is cycles and balance

this i knew apart from myself

in the diffused light of the solstice

a silver day with sky on the ground

a calming quiet steadfast haze

pulsing now with a galaxy of fireflies

under the weaker stars

brave because i said i would be

on the cusp of a new phase

Enter Orlando

drifts he down

into the darker

cooling valley

and hangs his pledge

upon the trees

that the thrice-crowned

queen of night may see

—referencing "As You Like It," act 3, sc. 2

Under the Mandrakes

i want you green

green and ripening in green shade

ripening to green

i feel it in my mouth

green and thirsting

agony green ferment dream agony

this is the world agony agony

tomorrow love will be rocks

and time a breeze under the mandrakes

but green as we go

green all the way to the end

green i want you green

—after Lorca on Whitman with lines from Lorca but unlike Lorca

Where Did You Go?

you were still

not even the mosquito moved you

from the earth you drew energy

from a touch so slight

if it were real you couldn't be sure

your skin became transparent

and light seeped into your whole body

up from the ferns you floated

and either you've been gone for awhile

or you were never here in the first place

The Volunteers

burdock, dames rocket, comfrey, potato

apotheosis of a compost heap

grows lovely with the volunteers

lush in each other's company

embracing fate and happenstance

nourished by spring and proximity

inventing themselves anew each day

more alive for natural entwinement

than the structured garden's civilized rows

which are someone else's striving

Cool Morning With Flute

everything's connected

music filled the woods where laurel bloomed

not the music of the spheres 'though there was that too

but music human-made plaintive soothing alive

a low harmonious breath an homage nature never forgets

i stood in chest-high ferns near a silver stream

i unfocused my eyes and was still

sunlight slid refracted on gossamer under the trees

the shadows of birds sailed against green

a woman beside me said one

and the word hung in the air as sweet mist

—with a line by Louisa Mae Alcott

A Summoning

deep enough in the woods

ground charmed

by what came to me there

radiant and sensory

cloaked in rain

auras ashimmer

vital as a spring at its source

reason to be to have been to go on

never so alive as awake in a dream

Stopping on a Dirt Road at Sunset

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i stop the truck in the fleabane and turn off the engine

 i stand in the easing rain and look across the valley

mist already rising from the streams feeding the creek

this ridge and the next ridge world enough

this moment and the next moment time enough

in love with the force of my heart beating where it lies

After Rain

the air in the woods after rain

is the color of the old hours

with faith in each other

they come to us

our essential things

the day walks in circles around us

we feel the rain again

—with lines by Lorca

Peonies

truth lies far below the perfumed surface

if you keep your revelations to yourself

they are absolutely yours the master said

you is barely plural

If We Can

here's the trick

let the other

summers go

I Am Grateful

Days become dreams one pulled from out of the other

in this indelible spring i have seen what holds up the sky

i have learned how to close my eyes in sunlight

and to open them in shade

and to wait

 i have become a better man

searching once more for the light that sings inside of me

and finding it

an ocean leaps against the walls of my secret being

this passing season this season always passing

we are part of it forever

this poem is my thanks

—with images by Neruda (the subject is worthy) borrowed with a bow

This Time

weightier each day

Too often in springs past

the misdirections of living

have stolen me away

from what i loved most

not this time i promised

this time i will be there

to catch the may apple

as it falls a promise

i shall keep as exemplar

of promises to come

As the Sun Climbs Higher

Drifting now into the next big thing

becoming summer by degrees all too naturally

lovers of the closer look the finer concentration

becoming what we've always been

becoming what we'll always be

agents of continuance

 romancers of infinitude

martyrs to forevermore

Ocean You Said

Say it again and i'll give you the sea

late in the day with the sun on our backs

before us the sweep of the unbroken line

anything possible     everything here

A Place to Land

When you find it you know it

a subtle grace of color form and deed

a place of embers and mist with long walks

in truthful conversation and honest silence

where the shadowed woods echos with birdsong

where the fields show the face of the wind

and the owls call each to each in the night

this is where we'll end our days

our place to land under the river of heaven

our home and our peace

First Lightning Bug

Last night i laid down in the dew-soaked grass

to watch for a minute the beacon of a lightning bug

first temptress of this slowing orbit of the earth

in her strident attempt to call down a lover


i imagine she failed so early in the season

yet there she was casting tall shadows in the blades

making the most of her life as she must

and so was i under the first quarter moon


sharing the throb of the moment

heightens experience and broadenens of time

i saw a lightning bug and i have you to tell

i thank you and bow to your soul

Under the Canopy

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green thoughts

in a green shade

continual twilight

of the high crowns

at the beginning

of a green dream

unfurled in spring

realized in summer


when such as i

cast out remorse

a sweetness flows

into the breast

we must laugh

and we must sing

for everything

we look upon is blest

—second stanza an adaption from Yeats

The Shape of Space

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all alone not by myself

a second consciousness at play

the woods with more depth

more subtle shades of green

seen through another's eyes

never wrong in time or place

never wrong i tell myself

elevation is the smile on my face

—guided by words from Anthony Kiedis

Rain on the Windrows

a sobbing rain has ended in the warmer night

the season of fullness gathers around us

i smell it in the fresh-cut hay

breathing in the soothing vapor of the wind

mantra in and mantra out

standing barefoot in the field and looking up

long enough to be reminded once again

 the earth and the stars and the people

i love are one flower

Elevation

photo by J. Hetrick

the sun going down round and red

a hole in the cope of heaven

too beautiful not to be shared

enough to make a man

by turns visceral and virtuous

choose the latter and

live out his days in nirvana

Under Open Sky

wild strawberry

this is our time

i will say what you want

you've made it true

promise me before you go

but let us be quiet for now

when we rise we'll cast a shadow

Caesura

we paused

as you wished

and the days

went on without us 

      

petals fell away

from the may apple

Late Spring 2014

blackberry

light and fragance fill the field

the woods are thick with shade

birds are singing all the day

our hems are drenched with dew

too fast too fast when

winter seemed so long and yet

what a thrilling spring it's been

shared with transcendental souls

the children of Thoreau who for all of me

have made this mountain Concord

so i shall slow each moment down

and wait to hear the crickets sing

when summer will stand barefoot at my door