My Mountain

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Crossing the ridge of summer

into the year's afternoon,

young redwings grown

and flocking over fields,

cobwebs revealed by the dew,

country roads shining with rain,

the morning all the more glorious

for a white fog lifting from the valley.


Over the wet hill and into the trees

I deepen the stream of my life,

a breeze rolls over in the crowns

and sends another shower down,

moths fly ahead of me close to the ground,

a windstream finds me in shade

and speaks in the hollows of my face,

me and my mountain converse.

"I must cultivate privacy.

I cannot spare my moonlight and my mountain

for the best of man I am likely to get in exchange."

—Henry David Thoreau, Aug. 1, 1854.

—Containing notes from Thoreau's journals spanning twenty Julys.

As We Are

What can we do

about the night

the damage done

in love with ghosts

the empty house

the creaking stairs

but stand alone

beneath the moon

and wait for light

so slow to come?

The Heat

The heat we've never known

Torched by the approximate to love

The sweaty few in exclusion

Wired for convenience

The brain in its skillet

The heart in its pan.

Music at Eventide

Soothed in the evening when the wind dies,

Soothed by the hill at a lower register,

Its easy line against the tinting sky,

Tinting on the mirrored pond,

Calm as bullfrog dirges from the reeds,

Calm as fireflies rising from the field,

Helping now to ease the way,

As when i slipped her iPod from its case

To charge the pack and listen to her songs,

The slick back shining in my hand,

Her fingerprints still there upon the chrome,

And the music of my child played on.

Riders in the Flow

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Country roads at the speed of birds,

Evening cools in their wings,

The sky expanding over us

As if we were isolate flyers

At the center of what desire brings

In a world we made with words.

Adrift

More about the dark than the light,

More about the night and the half light,


Those who lived above me in my youth,

The numerous dead beneath me in my age,


In an owls' brocade and the weave of the moon

Two days from full, I'm thinking of you, too,


Rain on the lake in twilight, a limb over a limb,

The warmth of that, the communion of silence,


An empty bed, the drifting boat,

Drifting on the river of the night,


Slender fingers dragging through the dark

Setting all the stars ashimmer where they float.

Honesty and Fairness

How easily the hot words of the day

can vanish like the sunset

when we believe in each other,

and trust awakens like the stars.

–first appearing one year ago

And When the Moon

And when the moon

floated from the oaks

we were young again.

Relevance

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Under an angle of evening

human slights come into focus.

A red-shouldered hawk

screams as she swims

over cut hay.

They set with the sun.

Turkeyfoot Ars Poetica

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The evening is subtle and the songs are soft,

birdsong and windsong, and thoughts are songs too,

the lines of a poem are songs, silent music

you hear in your heart and your breathing,

a melody behind your eyes only you know,

quiet notes on a scale meant only for you,

birds on the wires that no one else sees

the same way you do, for the score is your life

and your being, and that's the intent, words

strung together meaning more than their meaning,

for we each are our own aberration

blown this way and that by our times

like parallel contrails in sunset,

and what is more lovely and fine?

Into the Woods After the News

Walking with my head down into the woods,

The news the news the news the news,

Walking into the woods in first light,

Hands empty, poetry in my pocket,

Into the woods and its close distances

Shining with cloud and awakening birds,

Gossamer across my face,

Pant legs weighted with dew,

Mind emptying into the ferns,

Spirit rising into the mist,

Living my life at this moment

As if i had all the time in the world,

Walking deeper into the woods.

The Berry Patch

I like to think the bear was first

with her hunger and her humid strength,

but she'd not wade in from the road,

the path i took through timothy

when rain had ended and a deer fly,

barred-winged menace,

bit me on the elbow bone.


So not a bear, but surely

some other neighbor hungry

for the riches of the berry patch.

Oh, let that be the little mystery,

another thing i like. I feast,

and now another itch to scratch.

Tilted Toward the Sun

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Tilted toward the sun,

the intensity of living

under the cloud cover

driving us to search

for purpose, meaning, legacy,

we begin at last to understand,

considering the vanishments,

the isolated now is what we have,

and how we treat each other,

and dogs and birds and grass,

whirling through enormous night,

the quality of that, and gone.

Future Past

Reminders of fall as the summer begins,

Time not a stream but a tide,

A yellow leaf in a vortex of green,

New blackbirds in pointillist whorl,

Her scent still there in a scarf in a drawer,

Time not a stream but a tide.

Tactile

Ants on a leaf

touching antennae.

The heart aches

for what is missing.