All the Little Hoofprints

Regaining the peace of the natural world,

One vision at a time:


They come in the evening,

Deer with the rain on their shoulders,

To drink from the woodland spring.


All the little hoofprints in the mud at our feet.

– adapted from a poem of the same name by Robinson Jeffers

At the Back of the Field

A corner of the world for stillness and sighs

There is something to be said

for the wind in the great green crowns,

for that music and motion and deep sea swaying,

for the comfort of leaves, an arboretum of mind,

something to be said for stillness and sighs,

for taking root where the field meets the trees,

for the moths and the sulfurs lifting and settling

in the asters now rising as high as our thighs,

something to be said for the woodpeckers rapping

deep in the shade of the woods at our backs,

for the sound of the tide of our breathing --

in to be one with the sky,

out to be grateful and calm --

something to be said for solitude's peace,

for the hum of the universe in our own ears.

Yes, there is something to be said for it all,

but let there be silence instead.

— To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized
need of the human soul. — Simone Weil

Hillwalker

Each day he walks the hill and never tires

of its line against the roiling depth of light,

never well but when he and his thoughts

do domineer in privacy. Away from the house,

away from the engines that interrupt dreams,

away from the screens that eat consciousness,

he seeks out always the hill against the sky,

and is invited once again to be what he is.

—with a line from Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," 1621.

Descent to Common Wonder

National Sequoia Park, California. Photo by Beth Moon for National Geographic

Down through the wide unstructured heaven overhead,

down through the orbits of clicking machines and bright

silver planes, down through the rivers of sound

to the good green ground with its shadows of things,

to sit in a chair in the sun with the wind on our necks,

to hear the birds and the trees and the murmur of bees

tunneling into the porch's adzed beams,

sawdust falling in streams to the backs of our hands,

the cords of our blood running dark over tendon and bone,

to live content at home behind our eyes

in the wide unstructured heaven of our minds.

Indigene

Mayapples opening, April 21, 2019

threadbare wanderer breathing sky

moving with care among the newborn

rhythm of your heart the universal sound

your heart and your breathing

breeze in the tender crowns saying here

here

here

In Praise of Close Focus

Swallowtail on garden flox. Please click to enlarge.

In a euphoria of swallowtails

on these few acres,

I am worn out by greed

Of the televised, entombed

In graves they've dug themselves,

Grabbing as they go,

Clever and numerous.

Their smiles are chilling.

The news. The news.

Here on this wooded hill

It is great and beautiful,

Here in this field

It is easy to praise

butterflies and lilacs,

Rain and the wind

In new leaves.


Take the dishes

Down from my roof,

Give me instead

The close-at-hand

While I await

One with a great level mind,

Sufficient vision, sufficient blindness,

And clemency for love.

—with lines form Robinson Jeffers'  "Meditation on Saviors"