Seasonal

Farm roads at sunset,

Ice in the ditches, ruts in the mud.

Man in a worn canvas coat

Walks with a stick and a limp

Listening for bluebirds.

Never too soon where there's hope,

And never too late.

Gusts on the Ridges

Rescue from "the shallow stream of time and men's affairs"

   

In the speed of the wind

Across flattened fields,

Worked earth an icy paste

Sticking to my soles,

Sins raw in the purged oaks

Raining down the dead,

I hear the voice I want to hear.

I try to get it down,

So that you won't forget,

So that I won't be forgotten.

Yosemite

Firefall at Horsetail Falls, Yosemite. 2/17/19

—Mike Mezeul photo   

The falls caught fire

At the end of the day,

A world unimagined —

Some humans are damaged and cruel,

The parent can outlive the child,

And you loved me.

Renewal in Late Winter

     

Slower in these fluttering days

          of freeze and thaw,

Face to the sun when it's there,

          cautious on the ice,

Slow enough in either case to see

          patterns of the moment,

Old footprints raised above the snow,

The comings and goings of life,

          which moves too fast.

Yet in first light did not we see

A few weak stars above the woods

          low in the velvet south,

And in that moment understood

We have not exhausted joy,

          not sentiment, though brief?

So let our years become advanced

While still advancing youth,

          and not forget the living tree

          whose bud follows hard upon leaf.

If our living is not poetic, it is not life but death that we get.

—Thoreau, March 1, 1851

Bishop's Winter

  

Last quarter of a season and a life

          well under way in weaker light

when winter lives beneath a pigeon's wing

    

          a dead wing with damp feathers

                    as the poet wrote

                    and that seems right

—with a line by Elizabeth Bishop,

Mistral

No one in sight but the wind

at the back of the field

where the woods begins

where the wind bursts over the hill

the wind like a wraith

with its blade and cloak

bending the goldenrod bones

the tall white wind

into the trees with a shout

dropping its burden of ice

heaped on the armored ground

at the back of the field

with no one in sight

but the tall white furious wind

where the woods begins

I am never alone.

Wet Snow

Rain-wet snow

          illuminates the night

                   down wooded slopes.


Solitary sounds

          a tapping on the shoulders

                    a tidal rush

                    of ocean-sky within.


A lingering dream

          after a long climb

                    a welcoming kiss

                    planetary essence

                               indelible hope.

Breaking News

Snow began and calmed us,

graced the ravaged field,

and better showed our path

over the hill and back again

through a thousand revelations

as the dog can tell you.

Of Melody and Pulse

Through mud hills I wander

with an image and a voice

because I have a music in my head,


A music without sound

I try to match upon the page

of longing, loss, and suffering,


A standard human heart

clenching in your chest and mine,

inadequate, inadequate, and strong.

Kind Morning

Lie down in fog

          under the thorn tipped with rain,

          sun a pale coin dissolving in mist,


Tell me again

          how such soft weather

          forgives us both.

Sunset with Crows

In the company of crows

          at the day's end

          with no one about,

Their harsh, despairing cries

          echo from the empty woods

          across the melting snow.

      

Yet as the sunset shadows

        reach my boots a gold

        deliberate happiness

Overtakes the sky and I

          hear once again

          the cause of praise

With no one about

          at the day's end

          in the company of crows.

—with a term from Yeats describing Keats.

Dogs in Powder

Worn out with dreams

I strap on the snowshoes

and take to the trees with the dog

in the quiet blue dusk.


She leads the way,

blur in the blue,

running great loops in deep powder,

always returning fast from behind,


Rocketing past,

always returning,

each time a pleasant surprise;

so little comes back

when one’s growing old with his dreams.

—with a nod to Yeats' "Men Improve with the Years"