Have the leaves turned yet?

Abandoned sugar camp .

Yes, weekender, the change is under way,

has been since the leaves first spiked,

nature's course is subtle when you're  in it,

each hour something new and never ending,

Everything looks

better in the rain.

each moment of rain

sets free a leaf,

each gust of air

reorders the surface,

and the whirlwind

in the cornfield

is a common wonder.

A Cleansing Rain

Laurel Ridge. Click to expand.

  

A lady rain danced its pavane,

then a warmer evening,

crickets quicker in the jagger patch.


Too easy to think back,

the woods yellowing around me,

scenes of a life pooling with leaves.


In the bruised light of autumn,

with its sweet scent of decay

and the weather degrading,


I wouldn't call it loss,

I'd call it clearing.

—"Lady rain" is what farmers in my family called a light, steady rain.

Waiting for Rain

iPhone 6, click and expand

Waiting for rain,

planting bulbs in brown powder

deeper than we can remember,

raking walnuts from the yard

and wheeling them to the woods

under a river of grackles,

grinnies clucking in the stone rows,

eating dinner under the maple

that's always first to turn,

rocking on the porch at sunset

as a  cricket sings in the aster thatch

and a blood moon rises into the milk of twilight,

waiting for rain.

Empty Farmhouse

A car passes in the half-light,

that's all it takes, the sound of it,

and you are there with me,

your heat and your motion,

with me as the money runs out

and the house falls to ruin,

with me as the yard grows up

with raspberry and ash

and the path to the spring disappears,

with me as elderberry blocks the barn door

and the fields clog with trees.

A dream of desolation

is a dream of forever.

Twenty Minutes in Balance

First morning of fall. Please click and expand.

The field at the peak of its flourish,

asters and goldenrod over your head,

in a threnody of bees

spread a blanket on the path,

and be still,

waiting for something to happen—

it happens inside you,

wait twenty minutes,

transcendentalists say,

to enter a dreamscape

of your own projection—

nature never disappoints.

Consolation

I wanted the sky,

that was my ambition,

but i'll take these leaves

crisp in the ditches,

their clatter and smash

loud on a motorless road.

The Artist Speaks As He Works

"Head of a Woman," Pablo Picasso, 1909

    

I rarely pay much attention

                        to the surface—

A master key to the secrets

                        of my art,


Everything in flux and in question,

What about this, and this, and this?

The ceaseless torment

of five thousand paintings,


Loss, anger, mourning—

Voids the shapes accommodate,

Each generation swept up

In an age of cascading uncertainties,


Consider me, then, dearest shape,

                        your sculptor.

—A found poem, phrases from a New Yorker review by Peter Schjendahl.

Intent

milkweed

  

So i lose myself instead

in the patterns and forms

of the natural world

where lightning and wind

may harm me

and the sun may blister my skin

but it's nothing personal.

Cadenza

Please click and expand.

  

You are not here now today

and yet i found myself listening

for the melody of your voice

as if i could find it in the asters

sprung from the hilltop where we left you

that black spring we carried you home,

and i heard high up the unexpected wild cry

of a redtail circling under a cloud

when i turned and almost began to answer.

—with a line by Leanne O'Sullivan

The Bee Field

   

The field is full of bees,

Full of goldenrod and bees,

Ten acres in the late day sun

Thick with hum and pollen glow,

Futile to pretend I am at peace,

Unhitch my senses from the focused flow,

Ten thousand bees, ten thousand points of song,

And me the only darkness in the solidago.

—after James Wright's "Flowering Olives"

Monarchs

   

Off they go, like children setting sail,

nurtured on the field of your protection;

mostly you let nature take its course.

The best that you could do, it seems,

was to guard the earth.

Solidago

Please click.

 
Walking through the field

In September is a voyage

Where discovery is not

In seeking new landscapes,

But in seeing with new eyes.

—Proust said that.

Up Through the Trees

Time to go then,

When mists are on the fields

And webs are hung with rain,

When sawings of the insects

Rock the beaded night,

And all the fairies in first light

Fly the overarching paths

Betwixt this consciousness

And its refrain.

From the Irish

  

The summer was not so sweet for us,

We did not fly over the high hills

Riding the fine black stallion,

Or lie under the hazel branches

As dew gathered about us,

We did not light bonfires of celebration,

Or blow the horn on the mountainside.


Between us the mountains were forbidding

And the roads long with no turning.

—found in the poetry of Nuala Nî Dhomhnaill

Understanding

Cassellman River

Heat led me to water

where i knew

i was closer to stones.

It is vain to dream of a wilderness

distant from ourselves.

--Thoreau, Aug. 30, 1856

Apologetics

the wider the better

  

There it is for us to see,

what will happen to us,

and soon, our own condition

seen in the lives of others,

each of us awaiting our turn

at grief and despair,

Pascal's terrifying image

clearer now at seventy

than at fifty, and clearer still

with each stunning day,

how the morning pours

through dew and weeds,

how the lilies close at night,

how the patience of a friend

makes all the difference,

how we forgive and learn

not to expect that in return.

The Voracious Meek

Please click for detail.

  

Dragonfly, old carnivore,

more evolved than we who think

This is our time, earthling long

before us, and surely long

after we are gone,

lethal hunter with no opinion,

as far as we can tell, therefore

cannot be misled, free

from being right, and thus,

inheritor of ruins.

This Place Again

Europa passing before Jupiter, NASA mosaic, 1979

This place again

where i wake up

to find i have no daughter

or fall asleep

to dream i have no daughter.

— ultimate lines from "A Threshold" by Don Peterson.

Open Country

Today I stayed home.

I was still for a long time.

The evening was empty and quiet,

And my heart became full.

Islands in the Fog

Please expand by clicking.

Islands in the fogs of morning,

the hilltop fields stand isolated,

 exotic domes in a silver sky,

kingdoms of paths and gates,

rich with beasts and secrets

from another age under the oaks,

visited by birds and us,

taken by the rising mists

to see this world anew,

our local wonderland.

All the News

Solidago opens on schedule and

for the first time all summer

i know where to find them,

the honey bees,

fewer every year,

and more of us.

The robins are gathering to go.

Two more shootings

in the valley,

The President is in the Arctic,

promising more millions

to help the sinking villages.

Toddlers are washing up

in Greece.

The Steelers play tonight,

but just the backups.

Traffic will be terrible.

Warm September Rain

The rain is warm and brief,

there and gone again

on the cracked ground, 

like a child i see running

in this fallow field,

there and not there,

and i am running again

over this dusty road,

acorn caps and cherry pits

vanishing beneath my feet.

—mobile version

The Rain Is Warm and Brief

September and the rain is warm,

shattering on baked earth,

tearing webs and gone again

as soon as sun without a trace

on the cracked ground, 

there and not there like a voice

i remember over this field,

not even with an echo

or an echo an echo

of all that is gone,

and i am running again

over this dusty road,

acorn caps and cherry seeds

vanishing beneath my feet.

–adapted from a poem by Paul Perry.

The First of September

The long fingers of sunrise

part the veils of morning.

Young blackbirds practice migration,

their number growing by the day

and streaming now

above the dew-webbed dawn,

your shadow long across me,

your profile rimmed with fire.