Only by Looking

Clouds of the twilight, that brief glow,

where in your cave of sleep?

Clouds of the sunset, that eternal light,

where in your tunnel of dreams?

–pastiche from the vanished poems of Juan Ramon Jiménez

The Sound of It

eyes down

  

Invested in the sound of it,

hardened by the sun,

leaves crush underfoot in fading woods.

Above through thinning crowns,

clouds without rain

and a hawk in the clouds,

work in my head and my eyes down,

the work, the work, the sound of it,

until the scream, the scream in the clouds.

I need to work,

i need to make,

i use the wild screaming cloud.

Amphibology

Belly down on the cool earth under ferns,

Leather-backed with gold-rimmed eyes,

Tender-toed water-born solitary wanderer,

Free-thinker far from the songs of the pond

Abandoned to your wet communal cousins,

Your method being stillness, theirs a blind leap.

If Only

In the lower hours

shadow covered us

and the day ran off,

a sodium fire in distant clouds.

We will die not knowing.

Better Near the End and Still Beginning

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Spiders in the solidago

morning dew

twenty years of study

to learn how

the field will peak when asters bloom

summer's end in sight

september then

strong with what i should have done

the process of a life

the need if not the skill to get it right.

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–devoted to poetry since the fall of 1996

As the Nights Cool

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But that's all different now 

i have wasted my time in my time in too many places

the nights are cooling and the mice are coming in

the mice are coming in and what happens now

in between is my life my life and what happens now

is happening now and i am lucky lucky to have

these woods to stand in these woods in the mist

to stand in the mist of what's happening now lucky

to have a house in the field where the goldenrod opens

and a dog snores in the kitchen lucky to have

this bottle of malbec and books books to stand in 

lucky to have this life in the mist with the mice

coming in and me standing in one place hearing

the birds it's all different now all in one place

and the birds in the mist singing singing

i'm here i'm here i'm here.

–after Jim Harrison's chapbook, "Returning to Earth,"

and with a line by Archibald MacLeish.

Fisherman

Duck, NC

In the sea was a bass,

and i was on the shore with my

heart in my chest, the clouds

above me, and she was in 

New York forever, and I, 

casting and reeling.

–altered from a long poem by Jim Harrison

Still Life

The house is empty and quiet,

Still life,

Yellow glads in milkglass on red stairs,

The climb and the descent,

Still life,

Flowers on the stairs for both directions.

I decide to believe it's still worth it.

Living in the Temperate Zone

Even this will be reduced,

Numbers less than ten, the single digits

Godlike in their size and solid form,

Living in the temperate zone,

Days magnificent and singular

By their subtraction.

You always were alone.

You didn't mind.

Expecting Katydids

A few words fill the day.

Slowing in the wine of summer.

Time slips away.

To Those Who Altered Course

The harmonies of evening, land, and sky,

covered by the shadow of the earth

with day above us in the clouds,

finches in the thistledown, swallows in the air,

the church upon the hill with cows,

all of it in harmony, even searing tires

down the paved road past the ridge

figuring with narratives of crows,

even the sigh of an old poet on the porch

forgiving those he once thought friends,

the river over stones beneath the bridge.

Old Matadors

Then we lay aside the sword and the lace

without lyric or narrative,

no need when the kill was so long in coming,

nailed the young moon to the sky upper right

where its horns could wound no one,

pale bull in a dark arena long ago

abandoned by all but the romantics,

and wrapped in a stained sash

and the stain spreading

we waited for the dawn of a new era,

the years that would come to be known

as the Age of Devotion,

pretending we hadn't been gored

and would live to see it.

Reading in the Woods

Three-candle reading in daylilght

filtered through maples and oaks,

visited by ghosts and deer,

undisturbed among the dead whose minds

while they lived flowed through their pens,

and now through their pages bound and acid-free,

a consolation in our self-regard,

teaching us we are not so different,

be it thousands of years between footfalls,

obsessed with love and with death,

awed by the beauty of the planet,

the best of us wedded to hope

and to praise, praise for the going.

Back As We Remember

Here we are again way over there,

The corn in tassel and the cloud roof low,

The fecund smell of pollen on the wind,

The dirt road flanked by rustle and green shade

Crossed by gleaming crows, and here we are,

And, oh, the distance covered –– though not far.

Translucence

Open space, whether on the page

or in our hearts and minds and days––

wide enough to let the light shine through––

much needed for our peace and sanity,

for though our feet be solid on the ground,

our thoughts and dreams are vapors of the sky.

We need the space to fly.