In Forest Halls

Leaves tile the forest halls,

An easterly wind thins the ceiling,

All day in the woods my senses revive,

And the rain is a mansion of feeling.

Praising the World by Being in It

A free morning with nowhere to be

but afield where i am,

away from man's hate

with the geese wedging over

and the next generation of milkweed

turning to goldfish in their husks.

A walnut falls in the yard

with a rap on the ground as clean

as the crystaline calls of the jays,

and i will move through the day

with the sweet stain of the earth on my hands,

breathing its sweeter decay.

Reduction

The willow tree

against an anodized sky.


Birds and leaves falling

with no shadows.


A man no longer sure

what's important is more important

than what's not.

—with a line by Wislawa Szymborska

Transcendent in the Aster Field

Please magnify.

   

I'm afraid i'll die

with something to say

maybe on the floor

or maybe worse

drugged and bedded

in a stark beige room

where death is routine

unable to say i'm afraid

instead of with coffee

dropping my pen on the porch

or better yet in the aster field

brightening with dew

beaded with daybreak

birds flashing in the briars

or scattered there at least

as my daughter is scattered

windblown and atomic

climbing the ladders of sunrise

soluble and covalent

at the top of the watershed

moving toward the sea

she with her head start

merging with everything

all the great and small deaths

reduced to the elements

geologic and everlasting and mute

but fabulous in how we combine.

Luminists After Rain

    

Creek fog drifting in the valley

You somewhere over there

Me somewhere here

Wandering in the temporal mist

Ridges deep and continental

Ridges infinite and vague

Ridges curving back around

To where the earthwound heals

And there we meet again

In filtered sunlight

Ageless and unafraid

In the clasp of radiance

As if the mind were paint.

A Companion's Reproach

Riding closer to our fire

Even though our nights are cooling

Tilted as we are from light


It is colder now

There are many stars

The leaves are falling


Tell me your truth

If you know it

Or join me in silence

As Us

Common as clover,

So rare in the universe

It nears nonexistence.

Value the day.

Crepuscular

Walking in the woods past sundown,

finding my way as much by habit

as by seeing in last light,

wide-eyed with the other animals

emerging as the humans leave the night,

time slows down and waits for me,

the pooling air becomes a sweeter song.

Is that because i have so little left to go,

or has it taken me this long to know

i've been living in a nocturne all along?

Nothing Original

Originality that's the ticket

a shocking new strophe

with syntax and meter

to conjure up ache


Love and its wreckage

mangled swans and the like

the death of a child

the isolation of aging

the usual existential insults

some self-inflicted

to beauty and grace


But i live in the hills

in the last weeks of summer

choke cherries ferment

to wine in the goldenrod

hawks in migration

sailing southwest after a storm

more sky in the crowns by the day



Oh i know nothing lasts

but i cherish this life

this common life in the country

common mundane my own.

Spectacle

A few acres in September

Is  more than we need,

Bee-loud, regal,

Beyond us.

Zugunruhe

please expand

the flocks combine

a roar of wings above the drier field

we feel it too the urge to fly

nomads restless in the clearer night

deeper in the banded velvet void

seeking peace expecting less

chipmunks clucking in the stonerows

deer in the sweetcorn empty husks

purple stains upon the path

the earth-song of the cricket through it all

the sound of our own breathing

the roaring of our blood

migration through the inner dark

we hear the apple fall

Belief in Autumn

please expand

the morning air above the field

was all awash with angels

        if you believe in angels

flying in place as white mist

rising with the slipping sun

 through the boughs of heaven

        if you believe in heaven

keeping your delicate balance

as the leaves burn and roll.

—with lines by Richard Wilbur

Faint, Brief, Gone

But you were more,

And still the air connects us,

Bridges of air connecting everything,

The heart walks them in peace,

How close our souls, how distant,

Blue sky between clouds,

Clouds, clouds, the bridging blue sky

Of our two separate dreams.

September Solidago

please expand

   

the field flares golden in the sun

september solidago

the sky spun clean by ocean storms

the summer's end that spring had formed

the aging year and all of us

to watch the autumn come

droning with the wasps and bees

september solidago