Mountain Verse

  

Snow rides the wind

through the laurel,

hides in the run

purling over stones,

one poem rising

after the next

and not a word spoken.

Force Quit

  

Squandering flow in the lowercase realms

Of facebook and amazon,

So many boxes and clever laments,


I open the door and follow the dog

Into the wind and the sky,


Woods on all sides and the hill underneath,

Scents of the mountainside, no one in sight,

Far from the likes and the buys,


In a world without things or opinions

Nothing is blocking the view.

A View of Being

Face to the sun

At the top of the field

In a soft winter,

The hum of existence

As wind lifts the page.

Who else are we looking for

To show us the way?

In Winter Woods at Nightfall

  

Wet snow at twilight

Holds light to the ground


Call of an owl

Deep in its kingdom


The heart is glad

For thing after thing

Miasma

Click to expand.

  

Haze in a winter

that won't take hold

Unease in a season

of alternative facts

Fire in the stove

or the furnace running?

Ice shelf collapsing

the size of Long Island

Candle flame

and the wind coming

Inauguration Day

  

In Washington the billionaires are toasting

With caviar and oysters in chilled vodka

Each other and their money and their coup

Damp and avaricious in black tie

In the lobby of the President's hotel.


I eat a peanut butter sandwich at the sink

And go outside to cut a few days' firewood

Ancient poems in the pocket of my coat

Having all I need among the trees and hoping

There's nothing here the wealthy really want.

The Uses of Freedom

Reading in the woods

by candlelight, the door

propped so the dog

can be where she wishes

as I can, hearing only

the rain on the siding,

the drip in the flue,

and the echoes

of crows surely gleaming.

Disappearance

Into the field

Light frost at daybreak

Nothing happens

A benediction

And for an hour

My life has no death

At the end of it.

Clock Winders

In an easy sky before another freezing rain,

warm enough to let the fire die down,

quiet moves us to another time,

fans turned off, computer dark,

refrigerator cold enough to sleep,

hearing just the ticking of the clock—

a 19th Century quiet in this old house—

the mantel clock with its worn face,

worn by my great-grandfather's winding,

winding with his crooked, honest hands,

three turns left and three turns right,

six generations now gathered by the hearth,

three for the pendulum and three for the chime

each night, its metronome a comfort

to me then and still a comfort now

for I am with them all again in firelight.

On the Edge

Forgive me if I'm on the edge,

The way the wind is blowing

Through noir woods,

The way the crowns shout and swirl,

The world gone unsteady,

An augury of crisis,

A Hobbesian philosophy

Plaguing the countryside

When all we want is company,

Kind and smiling,

Still trying to judge

Whether it's over.

Present Future Past

  

I remember once when we'll be walking

through the field, it was July,

your fingers purple stained and you'll say

you dreamed you're picking berries, it will be

our last conversation and it was

what I think of always when we'll walk

the field into the sky, tumbling continually

into the past from the timeless infinitesimal now.

In the Gallery of Winter

Slowly in the stillness

of a single digit ache

we found what winter

framed for us,

there for the seeing,

here for the feeling.

We had the best intentions.

Hard Ground

The ground froze overnight

the wind turned sharp

and slaps the house

as ice flies in the air

but there were milder days

just weeks ago

when rain hung in the trees

the path walked soft

and we slept better until dawn

able then to turn away

from government and news

to lose ourselves in woods and sky

a privilege of our age

a faith hard won

and rare upon the earth

convinced we had escaped

through chance and grace and zen

the history of men.

A Short History of Pantheism

A light rain hangs

in the black wet woods,

inverts the January hill

ten thousand times

in each jeweled tree,

tapping on the leafmat

as it falls in shifting air.

We must love the subtle

to preserve the world,

earth's fate in greedy hands,

profiteers in their removes

high in golden towers.

Who among them 

spends an hour

silent in cold rain

watching ferns emerge

as riddled snow recedes,

humbled by the order

of the cashless world?

We must bank

the profit to the soul

the earth provides

which has sustained us

all our lives

for fifty thousand years,*

raising songs

against the odds

for fifty thousand more.

* — anthropologic estimate on the appearance of language and symbolic culture.

Our Chosen Path

One squall away from snowshoes

Before the wind went blue with sleet

And puddles quivered on the walkstones.

Not the loveliest of days to end the year

But even in the slush

We were afield alone

Instead of on the street

And peace was every step.