Gone Missing

Click for windmills

Good job erstwhile lover

trying to become one of the things

you are not and still worth it.


The heat wave spreads

to the Arctic and the sea

will be under the house by fall.


Whoever you are now

are you missing?


The bees have gone

from the clover field.


This is what it means

to be present.

The Dying Cyclist

  

They lay where they fell

The hard road baking

               between feathers and shoes


The bike in the milkweed

Between the escaping pickup

               and the burst organs of flight


The truck from behind

With a roar and a shout

               in the joy of the scare


Too yellow for shadows

The clipped flicker

               more shadow than shape


Its blue-lidded eye its powerless clutch

Dead stopped in the merciless sun

               pooling on chips and hot tar


And he smelled the corn standing in tassle

And he heard the river of blackbirds

               pour into the passage of time


As he crested the hill

Leaned into the bend

               picking up speed

Skywriter

Scribbling poems in the woods

dark and glazed with steady rain

saying them to trees

standing guard in afternoon twilight

helpless as always in a downpour of memory

shaken loose by breezes in the crowns

a quivering of thoughts and leaves

straight up through the dripping boughs

with the hope that a few might rise

into the digital pale yellow sky

where they can be read

by anyone or no one.

Life in the Temperate Zone

You with your toes in old water

don't look at me that way


Conscripted by circumstance

I've renounced the material world


Leaping into asceticism

headlong into a cooler pond


Without regard to income

what's not to like


About self-preservation

through creative effort


Impressing the dead

and the yet-to-be-born


With a hint of what it was like

once upon a time

in the temperate zone ?

Thunderheads at The End of Pathos

Minarets of cloud

          Topple into the land beyond the oaks

                    That is not who we were


Crows screaming in a hot wind

          Rip out the willow's long tresses

                    That is not how we sang


Heat lifts the spiraling hawks

          High on the thermals of hate

                 Yearning for grace in the days of extinction

How We are Saved

The fields flood with sunset

In the mountains midsummer

By a tide of orange light

And the cries of small birds

We are lifted and spared.

—after a poem by W. S. Merwin

All That Way

All that way by cab

raging heart re-reader

The moths of June

battering themselves

against the bulb until first light

dusted us with scale until we shone

but could not fly

I am outside myself

twenty years

by any other name

the truest still will be

the rest has changed

When you come back

read Merwin to me

Still Alive

One of the world's oldest trees, an olive, near Publia, Italy, Beth Moon photo.

The tree of my grief grows in a field of ghosts

Where I planted it with my back to the sun

At the wall of mistakes built stone upon stone

On a hill overgrown with briars and scars

Blood and surprise in the ash east of eden.

New Normal

We know it’s wrong to be sentimental,

Like for the old days

When bees were on the clover,

And Mobius strips of birdsong

Infinitized the morning.


We learned to be tougher

On ourselves,

We learned to limit

Disappointment.

We're too smart for that.


But listen! Distant thunder

Softly thudding in the pink

Between lead clouds.

Another storm approaches.

You used to call me Dear.

— inspired by, and with a line from a poem by Rae Armantrout

Reading Merwin

In this disappearing world

there is a place

for two

where one listens

and one reads

Merwin again

even more slowly

a second time

I will meet you there

—In praise of W. S. Merwin, born Sept. 30, 1927, died March 15, 2019

Independence Day Ride

The freedom to be free,

to ride the hills on empty roads

in the windy, perfect quiet

with the sky against the ground,

to be still, conscious, grateful

for the beauty of this world,

this solitude, this peace,

wind and summer clouds and evening light,

a land with no one in it but oneself,

free with the wind in your mouth,

pushing the pedal for speed,

blue sky, white clouds, green fields,

the simplest of pleasures

and the dearest.

Robinson Jeffers for This Fourth

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit,

         the fruit rots to make earth.

You making haste on decay: not blameworthy;

Life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly

         a mortal splendor:

Meteors are not needed less than mountains:

 shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance

From the thickening center; corruption

         never has been compulsory,

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,

         a clever servant, insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits,

That caught – they say –

 God, when he walked on earth.

–– Robinson Jeffers'  "Shine Perishing Republic," 1925, condensed.