Seven Billion Astronauts

Our burning universe

Expanded as we slept

Traveling in bursts

Seven billion astronauts

Further and further apart

Dreaming of intersection.

Frozen Rain

Please click to enlarge.

   

Warmth high up

melted the snow as it fell

to freeze on the field

a crystal encasement

of the wreckage of asters

and goldenrod bones

before wind tore the clouds

and the sun burned through

restoring sopping decay

as the way of the world.

But wasn't it gorgeous

for an hour—

the glittering finite intensity

pleasure magnified by brevity?

And we came to understand

with cold rain on our necks

that Stevens was right.

Death is the mother of beauty.

Let us praise it as we pass.

Leaning Out an Upstairs Window

Steady wind and wooded hill

Jeering in the dark,

Regions of the snowless ground

Colored by the lights

Soon taken down when I'm prepared

For night upon the porch,

The damper flopping in the flu,

Colder air and me

The same, I hear the front

Move in. The house exhales.

What is this emptiness we share

Which we can't name?

Relics

Hill and hollow and the road

between the two where deer

have sailed across my hood

and turkeys glide heavy

into the wet woods above

old tires and dumped

TVs sticking out

of the slope half buried

in leaves like forsaken moai

guarding Easter Island

where the living were turned

from their gods and old ways

and no one remembers

what it means or

how it all came to be.

After the Long Night

Sunslip low behind black trees

Chanting on the hill night's end—

The cowl of memory,

 the old dark fears—

Shake off what you can

and leave the rest

To flashing blades of wind and light,

To imagined whispers of a friend.

The Ocean Inside

The ocean inside

calming as we slow,

our surf and our tide

shining in sunrise.

We remember, you and I,

how beginning feels,

dreamers that we were

and dreamers still.

Nearing the Solstice

Peace enough

to hear your own thoughts

Snow enough

to soften the day

Night enough

to drift on the sea of renewal

Rabbits Under Snow

The sun behind the ridge

the field in its own shadow

going bluer when a rabbit

bursts from under snow

stretching and compressing in a dash

toward the woods and its deeper dens

leading me to shelter under buried ferns

to watch my flesh and bone

moving on the path

as still another thought

shelters in these words

to watch you read these lines

o kindred eyes

changing in the changing light

we are so many creatures.

Stasis

Snow before sunset

stopped and the first sunlight

of the day flashed farewell

in the calm and gathering

dusk that embraced us

at the back of the field

as we waited.

Out from Under

Out from under roofs

with the clean horizon in our eyes,

the wind cold on our faces,

and in our heads

 the quiet when it comes,

we fill the blue,

and gratitude returns.

The Promise

Not long before

The snows began

We promised we would stay,

A scattering of words

Across a final scattering,

One field as we remember it

When we become the hill.

December

Your month,

Snow on the oak leaves on the field

I see you run through in ripe grain,

Sunlight in your hair,

And why you are not there.

In Evening's Chill

In the here and in the now

A mackerel sky of change

Drifts above the barn

A hoot owl calls

In the wooded hollow

A kind of prayer

Rises as your breath

The soul in paraphrase

To save yourself

And then the rest.

Law and Order in Manila

Photo by Daniel Berehulak, New York Times, 12/7/16.

We need to figure out

What's going on. Until we do,

Protectors of the people, duly sworn,

Are murdering their addicts in Manila,

Hunting without license in the night,

The broken, sweaty streets

Slick with blood and rain,

The wails of women frightening the birds

To silence in the ravaged jungle,

A fetid, smoking swamp,

Drained to stabilize the capital,

The capitol, the capital,

Where business booms in certain zones

Merchandizing guns and caskets,

Death the easy answer

To the problems of existence,

Especially our own,

The final strict austerity.

Tell me if you learn

What's going on.

—Inspired by Daniel Berehulak's text and photographs in the New York Times' slideshow,

" 'They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animas,' " June 7, 2016.

(Click the line above to  experience the story.)

OBX Reverie

Forty years in the tides

and the storms and

no one to ask

how this became

the old days

how can this be

old if it is now

still sunrise under the pier

the ocean pooling for an instant

as it does when low tide turns

shell gravel rattling in the wash

the dead scattered on the beach

nothing escapes

the rise and fall

the rise and fall

the rise and the fall.

—with a line by W.S. Merwin

December Beach, 2016

Fly then from the wide black water,

turn your back to the blinding sky

and flee the mob frothing at the edge.


This time the ocean didn't do it.

Your ache traveled with you,

and loneliness, like whitecaps,

spread to the horizon.


So turn into the cold wind,

north to the frosted woods,

and fly toward the calm

of snow against tree trunks.

Head for the hills.