Mountain Stream

Iser's Run

Doves consoled me to the road

Which led me to the stream of grief

And everywhere sad hope

For spring was everywhere

Praising the way it happened

Praising the way it could be

Praising the myth of forgiveness

The passionate transitory

A dangerous season

As if there were a choice.

Flat on the Ground

Balanced on a spinning planet

In a swirl of spheres and systems

I spread a blanket on the ground

To lie flat on my place on Earth

Fingers in decay and starshine

Riding through perpetual night

Or lose my grip in solitude

And fall off the edge of Eden.

Sheltered in an Old Barn

Expand by clicking

Pushed by gusts booming on the wooded hill,

lifting the plane of the pond, unsettling the grass

and me, a mistral wind stirred the primal

instincts that guided me to shelter in an old barn

on an old farm planted now by the next

farmer still farming in this every-other country,

and i entered the peace of the past with the motes

and spirits afloat in shafts of light, the souls

of men and animals i want to imagine still

there in the hair stuck in the adzemarks

and in the shine of oak handles polished by men's hands

and in the smell of life still rich in the grain,

the wind pouring through the broken panes,

a galaxy of knotholes brilliant on the western wall,

and i stayed longer than i should.

Cut Flowers

Nothing interests me for long

Since sense betrayed the heart,

Not even sleep,

Distractions chirping through the night—

I live skin deep,

Plagued by verses i can't write,

By poems you can't keep,

Those squandered visions put to song,

Line endings at their start,

Not once forever wrong.

Theology

  

Another world

Bursting to get out,

And us

With our round heads

Thrust through the mullion,

Breathing and curious

About what once was,

Wielding our fictions

Against what will be,

Dying to know.

Carbon Days

Grounded in the woods you call your own

With one who knows but will not say,

Away from the pretenders and their secrets

No one will let you down today,

Rich with the peace of expecting nothing

You have your chair at the top of the hill,

You have your dog and last year's leaves,

The sunset and the dioramic constellations,


You have until the extractors come,

And you vow to make the most of waiting.

And Now

Awake before the spikes of the sun

Bristle in the trees, i am blinded by morning.


At the kitchen sink with water boiling

I hear the tremolo of doves through glass,


And i am filled with the enthusiasms

Of a man determined to live simply.


Outside, the cloud-slung twittery

Shakes loose the snow from branches,


I should ask What are the chances?

See the glitter over the stable as it falls,


And now the sun's above the empty stalls,

And now I should not drive to town.

Blue

Moon-blue again

when the sky opened

over the imprinted bank

where deer climbed

wide-eyed in indigo,

cautious and quiet,

as i hope to remain.

Spring Primaries

The phoebe is weaving her nest on the porch,

Rolled snow fence lies stacked at the margins,

The cost of our fears leaves me in the lurch,

But the worms in the grass are a bargain.

The Well

Please expand with a click.

Twice-boiled weather, the water from the well,

hand-dug, shallow, lined with stone

picked for a thickness from the oxen-plowed fields,

the yard sunken where the rock spring runs

hidden under grasses glittering in fairy rings —

 a ride through the neighboring farms in late winter,

red barns and white chuches still

plumb on their timbers and sided with sundown,

becomes sudden joy — the turn of the road,

the tossing hills, the swept sky,

the air cooling in the hollows, and the whole thing

opening to something immense on this earth

where we find our happiness, or not at all,

fresh water cold in the ground of our living.

—penultimate line from Wordsworth.

On the Edge

photo by Bonnie Brown

On the edge of something not quite revealed

Like watching the sea just after daybreak,

Loose-weave stuff born of memory and sensation

Blown back on itself by winds off the mainland,

Seclusion and endurance the proper response

To the conditions of existence.

—with a line from Stepping Stones by Dennis O'Driscoll

Rocket Radio

A balm of childhood

Shape of a rocket trapped voices from air,

Earphone plugged in the ear off the pillow,

Clip on the sash for the signal just local,

The window we'd climb through to make our escape

Open warm nights, breathing the mist,

Watching slow taillights fade into the hollow,

The fog in white veils spread over the marsh,

Wrapped in The Gunner's warm chatter,

Unable to hear, 'til the quiet of morning,

The shattering glass and the pleading

For the shot of the ball on the bat and the cheering.

Planting Onions

Turned ground like cake,

Cool firmness of the bulb,

Parched fingertips the proof

We add something of our worth

To bringing down the sun,

To raising up the earth.

Unnatural Warmth

click to enlarge

Coltsfoot blooms in the waste places,

Snowfence rolled in the fields,

Anything can happen

In such an unexpected afternoon,

Imagination pushing back against reality,

Dreambound with robinhop and quilts

Hung in sunstruck yards where

Blind moles tunnel in the dark.

Here there is no place

That does not see you.

You must change your life.

—turn by Rilke

The Swings of the Beginning of Spring

  

Fields flattened and gleaming match my temperament,

Following my conscience into solitude,

Boots sinking in to the actual earth,

Scrabbling leaves, stentorian crows,

Mind unfurling in a warm wind,

Agreeing with Milosz 's comment,

The Devil is social,

Hearing again as if for the first time

Emily's river in trees.

The Railroad Cut

photo by Larry Herman from "Seven Modern Poets"

What with the wind bending the long grasses

Of memory we climb the cut above the loves

Of our making and our unmaking,

Walking the grades guarded by faith and desire

Where the freights used to run belching black smoke,

Iron gods setting fire to the weeds,

A burning dividing the then from what's followed,

Now at the top of the hill with the tracks torn up,

Surveying our losses, nothing so dear

As wading waist deep with the smiles of another

When the wind shows its face in the way of our passing,

All we ever wished for, and nothing has changed.

—Seamus Heaney, his wife Marie, and their children, 1972.

Florida Primer

Venice Beach, Florida

Facing open water,

Sirens at my back,

Ululations in the retirement park

Jittering the little dogs

On leashes under palms,

Fresh vacancies a topic

Tonight over cards, but always

Sunny and warmer,

Tomorrow and tomorrow,

Sweet petty pace,

This walking shadow

Pedaling off to the beach

To outpace acceptance,

Seeking out clear light,

Like poetry or freedom,

Leaning in from the sea.

—with a line from Seamus Heaney's "Oysters"