The Creek

Laurel Hill Creek at King's Bridge

Divides us connects us,

endless flow of a divine system,

blood in the veins of the vital ground,

planet animal suspended in space,

beings of water in a water world

riding its back through infinity

holding on for dear dear life,

who would poison the horse

that carries the living through a desolate void,

who would permit the horse to be poisoned for pay?

Keep Moving

Middlecreek Township, January 29, 2015.

   

The wind calms and the fields lie still.

A deep mid-winter peace saturates the air.

I had not wanted to run the plowed road.

A day of rest seemed right a day to think

the thoughts of heartbreak defiance ruined love

the usual dark tour of the memory barn.

But i shook it off like a dog shedding snow

laced up my shoes and ran with a stick

false-confident enough to plod in the tracks for a mile

when the body adjusted and the mind lay still

and i ran and i ran and i ran in the snow and now

a deep mid-winter peace saturates the air.

Pastel

Upper Turkeyfoot, January 28, 2015

  

The longer i live the more i appreciate nuance,

the subtle tone the weaker hue the softer

light upon your cheek the lighter touch.


Late January noons divide the storms,

a smudge of blended pasts becomes our now,

a mix of shadows stretches into dawn.

Give me an easy laugh a steady gaze,

your finer mind a well-turned phrase.


Give me brief relief and not the cure,

my dear the less i know the more i'm sure.

At the Approach of Three Score and Ten

  

Poling out of the valley in the violet dusk

pausing sometimes to listen for the howls of coyotes 

over the roar of my functioning systems

no good to wait best to keep moving

over the field and through the woods in the dark

into what's known for a man as the decade of death

best to keep moving it feels like survival.

Would you know your own moods,

Be weather-wise.

He whom the weather disappoints,

Disappoints himself.

—from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, Jan. 26, 1852.

At the Cabin

Reading until dark,

snow straight down through fog.

Have it your way. The world is ugly

and the people are sad,

Stevens wrote, addressing those

without Imagination.

Walking home shin deep

as the trees gather 'round,

having it my way,

everything's in motion.

—with two lines from Wallace Stevens' Gubbinal

Solitude

Snowshoeing in the slow blue woodland night

The strength of my breathing

What you said

The thud of my heart

Generational: A Longer View

  

Lock the front axle and turn up the hill,

steady on the gas, trusting the transfer case,

enjoy the fishtail as you churn in the ruts,

when you reach the top you can shut 'er down.

Stand in the wind and the silence.

From here you can see halfway to Centerville,

knowing the farms spread out before you,

the old clans, descendants of the settlers,

the land clearers with sturdy German names,

the Pletchers and the Sechlers and the Markers,

the Saylors and the Kregers and the Reams,

the Kneppers and the Sanners and the Stahls,

stone pickers, well diggers, panther killers,

forcing their wills on the beasts,

beam hewers, church goers, deer hunters,

old before their time, the price they paid for effort,

proud, self-reliant, still, still,

privileged to live among them,

standing on this January hilltop,

windswept and drifting.

Ohiopyle Morning

Youghiogheny River Gorge, Ohiopyle State Park photo by Stacie Hall. Click to expand.

  

  

The world rises with an old purity.

Thought flows into snow, vanishing.

The Humanities

On exhibit in Upper Turkeyfoot. Please expand by clicking.

Soon i'll don some artsy garb

maybe a long scarf and a beaver fedora

to wander the city with other artsy types

making the scene from gallery to gallery

in a celebration of art of artists of dilettantes

but today i crawl through my own field

in the gallery of winter and in case

you're wondering what i'm wearing:

a stretched out cotton turtleneck c. 1969

under a bulky thrift shop sweater

with moth holes i've sewn shut

above insulated jeans with tattered cuffs

and topped off by a pilled watch cap

of Carhartt brown which ties it all together,

de rigeur in the cultural district of the hillside,

himself an artist of the Upper Turkeyfoot School.

All of Us

  

under the shadow

of winter's wing

more than ever

we want closeness

sweet warmth

together in the dark

January Edge

  

Behind me, like a car coming,

the wind guns it in the woods.

Beside me, like a hawk screaming,

the basswood and the cherry

grind together in the wind.

A little edgy maybe,

all day to think things over.

Anything could happen.

Diorama

Please click to expand.

Keep moving

outside most of the day

the house a warming hut and a library

the sun in a low arc out of the woods

over the corn stubbled knob

and into the woods yet again

evening keep moving over old snow

the wind with a finger under your collar

the earth rolling under you

moving keep moving keep

celebrating muscle and bone

the diorama of this wakeful dream

one stunning scene merging into the next

without and within.

Of the Night

  

Walked a mile from the house in the dark

through the field and the woods with no moon

though the paths were white shadowed snow,

geese i heard flying high above the gorge

following the creek and calling each to each,

a train i heard following the river past the ridge

calling every other atman wandering the night,

surely there were more, i mean, there you were and

there was i, but maybe that is all we need to know.

Writing Life

  

Of coming and going i mostly just watch

content in the place i've made for myself

practicing stillness near the top of the ridge.


I'm not sure it can be, what the poet

Donald Hall has called a double solitude,*

not for me, but still i think it ideal.


He meant living with Jane, of course,

both of them working alone after breakfast,

artists in love. She died young.


Donald Hall, 86, has stopped writing poems,

not enough testosterone, he says through his beard,

watching in stillness the coming the going.

*—Hall's loving description of his life with fellow poet

and wife Jane Kenyon, 1947-1995.

Don't

   

Rain on the ice

cue the memories

alone with those

as are we all

you should have

yes not now

the dock is rotten

don't even think it.

The Atemporalists

Welcome to the post-Internet age

    

and feel for the visual artist

struggling to create an image

in an image-sickened society.

Where is the old slow art

of the eye and the hand united

in service to the mind?

Call it painting, call it writing,

call it the art of taking your time,

work and step away,

clean your brush, look out the window,

read and reread and reread,

fix the fire and pour the coffee,

work and step away,

that's the work that satisfies,

going slowly enough to get lost

in the inner expanse,

the world turned inside out,

taking the risk

you may never get back

or shall we call that the reward?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

—T.S. Eliot

—with a sentence and an observation by Peter Schjeldahl.

Zero and Under

   

Degrees are at love

and it's cold and beautiful

and we had forgotten and

we had every right to be fearful.

Stand closer to the fire.

Native Species

Creatures of latitudes northern,

we were made for this,

fire in the stove, wood in the shed,

two-stage blower ready to go

when the wind dies down,

water in the spring, kerosene in the can

in case the power doesn't come back on,

pushing the shovel for now,

praising old wool and silk against the skin,

firing our own furnace with honest work,

never a problem with heat from the heart.

As Winter Takes Hold

Below the cabin.

  

Just enough snow to highlight the stones,

Just enough cold to harden the path,

Just enough wind to groan on the hill,

Just enough dread to make you a man.

Resolve

Please expand by clicking.

to cherish subtlety,

the weaker hues,

the delicate balance

of the systems of the earth,

the fragile graces of age,

the wisdom of silence,

the brevity of consciousness,

the joys of tranquility,

and the certainty of time.

All Day a Silver Rain

All day a silver rain hung between water and ice,

Hung in the branches and encased the stones.

In the cabin it was good to sit close to the fire,

A human fire that drove the cold damp from my bones.

Blake remained closed at my side.

Where is existence, outside of mind and thought?

Mental things alone are real.

Rain rose as steam from my clothes,

I looked through the window at the absence of birds,

Rain froze in ripples on the glass,

The warmed space around me swirled

with a thousand scenes remembered and imagined,

The eye envies the mind.

—with two lines by William Blake, c. 1810, and last line by Chuang Tzu, c. 360 BC,

An Amnesty

There is a place behind this hill

so real it makes me ache

and i think our stay should not end.

Some say the world goes wrong

as revenge and if that's so

our lives here are an amnesty granted.

—lines adapted from William Stafford's "Our City Is Guarded by Automatic Rockets"

First Day

end of one one

wind breaking trees

owl over a daylight moon

not a word not a face

and frost in the ground