Snow After Rain

Rain before snow

the creek fast in the valley

under its own breath

on a wooded ridge between streams

we hear the train 

calling behind us and we know

a muffling snow

soon will calm our hungering souls

convinced we can see

Pegasus flying in the white wings of mist

a flight of ideas

for the mind is a wind in the sky

and we can glide

over the valley we know so well

and see a kingdom

we were right about the snow

which falls on us now

like an amnesty in a land of the quick

fires in our heads

hearts pumping wild unto breaking

all of it never enough.

Conscious

one more

shortest day

in this short life

one day shorter

tomorrow

more sun

"We must remind ourselves each day that we die." — Thoreau

Two Pi r

unidentified

and flying

no object

The Madness of Tides

All gristle and gape

a hundred dogfish lie dead on the  beach

gulls dragging them seaward

where the boats fished all night

lifted their outriggers

and emptied their nets

tossing the trashfish over the side

in moonlight



The edge of the sea

is no place for the past

in the present's mad churn

in the thunder of renewal

death and life have the same smell

dogfish washed up in the dark

The Geminids slashing above them

the Dipper on its handle over Cornwall

or some other cliff-shored land

on the far side of the sea

where the stars rise out of Eurasia

and people stand in wonder

near the end of their night

trapped with their grief in their sanity.

In a Country of the Mind

if we can

the sun and wind

if we must

the cold and ice

imagination delusion

in the close quarters

of the mind

we hold true north

shoulder to the wheel

working without cease

to make sense of the

irreconcilable

—gleaned from the introduction to "Robert Lowell: 

Setting the River on Fire," by Kay Redfield Jamison

Double Solitude

quiet companion

one thing more

than we can expect

each of us alone

together

They, Too, Were Birds

Duck, NC, 12/17. Please expand with a click.

always first into the wind

gray-blue gray-green

a solid thing

 spume and rain and pelicans

that sweeps the beaches clean

from Duck to Hatteras

a steady wind that drew men here

convinced they too were birds

and you because the sea is vast

the sea is vast and sky and wind

a man can lean on

wind and surf to fill the footprints

of the ghosts who crossed the dunes

and smooth your ragged margins

purged by wind and walking north

to turn at last toward the south

wind and the past at your back

erosion and renewal

forgiveness and ruin

to help you home.

Fall of the Super Moon

best at the end

descent into dune grass

with no exclamation

in night's last partition

when the blaze nears the rim

and you want to try once again

No Beauty But In Things

so let the days and nights condense

reduction to a core

surrounding us with wonder

at the beauty of the things

we find ourselves among

in the healing emptiness

of an expanding universe

—title by William Carlos Williams