Metaphors in New Snow

Rebuilt the low stone wall

which falls in the thaw

as the ground softens.

Finished before dark, stood listening

to the train in the far valley,

and expected new snow.

By the time Mars cleared the trees,

the stones were white again, and

now i am shoveling once more,

Exulting in the wind

and the strength of my hands,

steaming with joy for this day

So different from yesterday,

and warmed by the hope

 that tomorrow will have its own pulse.

Change strengthens the heart;

you are reading this poem,

you know what i mean.

A Bird Landed

A bird landed where she lies scattered,

where i imagine her ashes

dissolving in snowmelt and nightfall.

The tracks vanish between wingtips

printed in symmetry,

a rising

 into the forked river of heaven.

I have been waiting in the wrong direction.

Tanka for Janus

  

Anxious to improve the nick of time,

In canvas over wool I walk the hill toward the trees

To warm myself before a cabin fire

And cannot help but wonder if you're thinking of me, too.

I write these lines, I guard what burns, I ache.

—First line is pure Thoreau.

Reading Inscriptions

There comes a time in the flow

when fade finds an angle

to read inscriptions by

trails of the voles in the softening snow

tunnels exposed of the moles

whose wills have passed in the dark

paths now crossing our own

each with our fears and desires

your face with your hair falling down

the delicate folds at your eyes

I adore in such light without knowing.

Magellan

Pandora led me through the nightmare ground

To waken with my head over the edge of the world.

The universe is dark and endless,

Reaching for your hand.

Index of First Lines

Please click to expand.

    

I waken you out of your nightmare as I waken

I wanted to teach you the names of flowers

I want my funeral to include this detour

I was lowering my body onto yours

I was the philosopher watching a pair of butterflies

I wish that before you died

I would bring glass flowers to the broken marriage

I would have waited under the statue of Eros

I would lie down by you here, side by side.

—A found poem from the Index at the back of Michael Longley's "Collected Poems"

Sixty-Degree Drop

Cold as it should be again

the ground cracking

in the windless dove-colored dawn

veiled face of a humbled sun

 low across the south behind trees

casting weak shadows over the paths

between woods and a two-story frame

with its old-brick chimney

and its ladder of smoke

the house still occupied

the fires still burning

in the made and the makers

everything everything

losing its heat into a pale heaven.

Flight

Looking back across the field

at the empty quiet house

alive with children

not so long ago.


Two hundred humans

streak across the sky.


Do not waste your life.

A Walk in the Vortex

Walking the path i walked yesterday

in my big coat and the dog

leading the way in her same coat

the snow more difficult now

blown for maybe miles pulverized heavy

the joints ground down a little more

right and left an effort of will

against gravity wind years

keep moving firing the furnace

the engine thumping away at the core

the blood hot and streaming

out to the hinterlands

staff in gloved fist

synched with the weak knee

flanked in the half-buried weeds

by those without tracks

a line of succession into bare trees

who make me myself

i'm still here.

Serenata for Mythicists

  

  

She

and the moon rose dripping from the sea

certain then it had to be

dark wind and thudding collapse

Tresses on a clamshell in a gale

flying fish and mollusks bent the stars

they'd read too much

the sting of salt the spark-blown fire

How much they wanted then 

the French engraved on the ring she gave

sliding years what would have been

and could not be

When the moon rose dripping from the sea

1

If it is time for resolution

may i live in awareness

grateful for the light