Why Rush to Town?

Blackberry. Please click to magnify.

Held up by thorn and bloom,

Why rush to town?

Sweet is the air and the blood drop,

Sweet the pollen eaters,

The wasp whose sting would kill,

Sweet the light I can't look at

That burns my skin,

And the high hawk, black and silent

With murder on its mind

Against the rising cumulus towers,

Sweet the drift in summer clouds,

Bleeding, burned, and stung,

Why rush to town?

Mountain Evening

I slipped the book into my jacket pocket

and climbed the west slope to the hilltop

where the air is warmer just after sunset

as the light fades over the indigo ridge

and the shadow of the earth closes over me.


The dog is late to arrive, busy as she is

digging for voles in young goldenrod,

now loping up the path to join me

warm and strong against my thigh

with mud on her nose.


The sky goes pink in fanlike rays

across high clouds I did not know were there.

Copper coins will pass to other hands,

the ancient poet wrote, What will be left to show?

Mosquito at my ear, the answer's here.

—with a line by Su Tung-p'o, 1073 AD

Our Minds

"Starry Night," van Gogh, June, 1889.

Eighty billion galaxies,

the universe we share.

The universe we do not share,

eighty billion more.

—from impressions on a visit to the MOMA.

In My Dream You Saw Me

In my dream you saw me

as you swam far out in an inland sea

slender arm raised in the sky

not waving but drowning.

—on an ultimate line by Stevie Smith.

Turkeyfoot Suite

Three Days in May

I.

Snow on the shingles over the porch,

Snow on the hammer lost in the weeds,

Snow on the hood of the derelict Ford.


II.

Rain rings expand on the gloss of the pond,

Oaks in the gray stretch and yawn,

A forest of saplings holding up rain.


III.

Dawn through the window over the sink,

Sun high and warm in the lilt of a woman,

Spiraling suns in a bullfrog's eyes.

Trial and Error

The experiment failed,

more for me than for you,

at least you fell in love

for a few months anyhow,

being mammalian and captured by novelty,

the old instinct that strengthens the gene pool,

or was it privilege, vodka, and lust,

and isn't that the method afterall?


I say, let us praise science well-funded,

learning from failure on slate tables,

gobsmacked among beakers and laptops

to discover we really had nothing at all

to lose, double-blind and unpublished,

until this.

The Revelation of One Place

At peace in the place of my own making,

rooted in a few acres with the wooden structures

of my building and repair that would collapse

I think in short order if abandoned, nature

quick to reclaim what's hers, including me,

so i attend to my soul as well as my shelter.


Yet after forty revolutions in one place

I still feel like I''m waiting for something —

the book drops, the heat clicks on,

the clock strikes its coil — half past.

The dog lifts her head and looks me in the eye,

and I remember what I wanted to begin with.


The waiting is finished. It's happening now.

The Woods Are Old Friends

I came to the woods

to rock on the cabin porch listening

to the wind new in the leafing trees

and look through green lace

at white clouds sailing on blue sky.

An inchworm repelled

from the roof to alight on my coat

and measure my sleeve.

A seed from a dandelion

parachuted onto my boot.

Squirrels had gnawed off the edge

of the arms of my great grandmother's chair,

a sturdy mission oak i had painted

Scout blue forty years ago

with leftover enamel

when i patched the old International

and my children ran happy

and poor through the oatfield

with the sun in their hair.

I tell you all this

because i got what i came for

and it no longer hurt me

if an old love had turned venal and mean.

The small things were best,

like the fat Junebug

banging its head on the screen.

Former Lives

Rain off the mountain

mad for the sea,

water the miracle,

as were we.

Iser's run where it marries the Casselman River.

Diurnal

Each day i walk the woods

Surprised anew

By all within my reach

*

What the poet wrote is true

Nature has the most to teach

—quoting Jane Kenyon.

Homeland

Please click to expand.

Sugars leaf

and the woods fills in,

oaks in the gray

as Maypoles bloom wax,

walking the path

through fading violets,

the dog full of rabbit

and the canopy closing,

beasts in the wild ungoverned

solitary, calm, and saved.

Agenda

Narcissus

Nowhere to go,

So much to see.

Pennsylvania Night

It was as though

you buried the sun

in the Pennsylvania night

in the velvet dark

wet with tears

never to see

the night's sun.

Sanctum

Please expand with a click.

At the back of the field

at the edge of the woods

where shadow begins

white violets bloom

facing each other

sky touches the ground

and nothing else matters.

Outside Season

An akene takes flight.

The day is slowing, the rain easing,

the wind becomes a breeze,

and when it clears

it will be outside season,

the population will appear

dressed in gear

delivered to their doors,

joining those of us whose clothes

were never washed with stones,

good canvas weathered naturally

on we who never went inside.

Lilac Sleigh

Coming down from the hill between rains,

the sky leaning out and over,

time slowing down as summer approaches

in a lilac sleigh drawn by swallows and bees

filling the yard with its scent, and you think

maybe that was the best you could do.

—with an image conflated from Mandelstam.

Ridgetop

Sensation of depth

A hollow in the chest

Like the send in the night,

The creek in the valley

Loud with rain

Like the text of her death.