Omega Ethic

  

Type to me,

Tell me the colors of dusk

Further out,

You were not wrong,

The sky spins,

I am here

For what remains,

And as close as i can come

Until then.

November Descriptive

A cackle in the rain-jeweled woods

and a rush of wings in the early dusk,

turkeys disturbed in their roosts,

deeper now into the valley,

hills bounding off in the mist,

and beside the shining road

the fresh hide of a deer,

ears heavenward,

filling with drizzle,

a bit of the soul of the beast,

clinging to its skin,

cools in the weakening light,

a barn owl by its cry

echoes between the ridges,

on cue.

Window at First Light

First light gathers at the glass

Undraped for early waking,

Red shadows in the room,

Morning without the sun

Which fails to rise,

But moves instead

Sideways through the trees,

Like a cell straining to split,

It must be as hard

To double as to die,

No longer imperiled by love,

Free now.

Behold the hill,

Forever formed by what it used to be.

—with a few lines by Kay Ryan

Two After Oliver Sacks

  

Prognosis

Say six months,

Your perspective

Sure to narrow,

Love, work, art,

The natural world,

A stopped world,

Say world peace

Begins within.

Filling in the Blanks

Said the doctor,

Metastasis, with a frown.

No time for global warming,

No time for the Middle East,

Though I still care,

They belong to the future,

I have my work

And those I love,

And I have gratitude

For having lived and thought

On a beautiful planet.

I am now face to face with dying,

but i am not finished with living.

—Oliver Sacks, 1933-2015

Turn and Return

  

Shining, colder days with weight,

Polished by a whiter light

Like pearls strung loosely,

The earth showing its true colors,

Its russets and siennas,

The leaves all down

Where we can get a closer look

At their classic lines and symmetry—

We should return to ground as gracefully.

Colder in the Hills

The township smells of woodsmoke

Were you planning to come back

Did we walk the woods at sunset

As the chainsaws' then the gunfire's

Final echoes faded in the valley

Did you love me then

Or do i have it wrong again

I can't be sure of anything

What follows is the stillness

Before winter settles in.

Easy Rain, Warm November

please click

As much beauty

In the common ground

As we are ready to receive

And not a drop more.

—paraphrased from the journal of Thoreau, Nov. 2, 1858

Cloud Cover

yesterday's ride, today's run

* * *

hurtling through space

wrapped in our sky,

scheming against ourselves,

barely seeing

as the days expire

* * *

tomorrow's perfect stillness

Soft Focus

tones in silence * the path * sun down

without intent * enough

to be fading * unfocused *

a walk through the completed field

uneventful * a beetle

in the grass * the way

to a deepening joy

Iconoclasts End Self-Imposed Exile

Sharp wind off the continent

Lifts the black water into blades.

We're crossing soon,

Abandoning the polished halls of leisure

To span the bridge to flight,

Returning to the tasered mainland,

Its sums and ossified systems

Dulling the sheen modestly won

Barefoot on sand, shirtless in wind,

Smoothed by a natural sway,

Sea music we'll hear

Until the bastards wear us down.

Stilled

When you have nothing more to say,

Just walk the beach

With the sun behind the dunes,

No one in sight for miles,

And the tide coming in,


This clean, rough music

You will hear

All the long drive home,

And hear it still

All the next night through


In your own bed,

And hear it still

In the bright quiet of the woods

Awaiting snow, and, still,

You will have nothing more to say.

Out of repose the truth springs. — Patrick Kavanaugh

The Ocean at Night

Night at the edge of the water,

with the wind in your face and the surf

spilling incandescence on your feet,

the middle ground is swept away

until all that remains

is the great and the small,

that which is closest to your heart—

there, the unbroken curve

of the globe in the dark,

and there, Orion leaping,

with the wind singing backup

for the empty sea, and there,

among the black silks

of the universe, the shivering stars,

and the shudder

of each wave's collapse,

and there, the wind

with no one there,

and then you are,

and nothing is resolved.

OBX Journal

East

A width of sand, a few hundred yards

where the wind is the thing,

a wind you can lean on,

muscular and with intent,

and the turning earth,

and the circling moon,

and the roar of it all,

the surf of your passing,

you at the edge still working,

gathering strength where the sun

rises and sets in salt water,

expecting the next system out of the tropics,

always the next storm

gathering beyond the curve of the globe,

and you're ready, even if this is the one

that unmoors you from the planet,

composing one more line and getting it down

in case someone cares to read it

at the bottom the sea.

West

The Weather, Turned

He'd been holed up with the wind

and grew accustomed to its chanting,

alto at the corners of the frame,

bowing out the windows

in two-toned gasps,

lament for the clotting sea

thick with jelly fish and twistoffs,

mylar balloons deflated at the tideline

proclaiming happy this and happy that,

he couldn't call it singing.

Long ago he'd lived with a woman

higher up in the hills

with different glimpses of the sea,

and it's good she wasn't there now,

holed up in the dark

behind the eroding dunes,

each tide scrubbing deeper than the last

and leaving less.

Palette

The gray-green sea,

And the gray-blue clouds,

And the gray-clear air in between,

Damp with the fears and weak dreams

Of ill-defined men straining for tint

And a hint at the colorless days,

Unless black is a hue and the shapes

Are not lost on the pulverized slopes

Of what once was thought solid and true.

Where's the red?

Where's the yellow with blue?

New York City

Anchorless,

Drifting,

Like rain at sea.


You were not supposed to die,

And neither am i.


A fog gathers over the water.


The places you took me,

Embroidered with foam,

Under gulls,

Among artists.


I am still learning.

The Ocean Inside

Before sunrise, the Atlantic side of Duck, NC

In the beat of the weather,

In the wash of the lyrical surf,

The world is still with us.

The peace we seek

Floats on an inner tide.

Coastal

Expand by clicking

Leeward rain

Seeing what we see

So few remain

And where are you?

First the Light

Currituck Sound

Out of the sea,

Over the bar,

Into the sound.

Something to count on.