Music

When the string section comes in I want to write it

a few pentameter lines that perfectly capture

the hollow I've felt as long as I can remember

the longing for what's missing or what could've been

and the vague sense I knew it once not so long ago

as if it were just out of reach over the next hill

waiting for me again if only i had the right words

if only I could slip a little sideways and find it

there moving beside me all the while like the moon

when I walk the fields at night knowing how the land

falls away in the dark as if the valley had no bottom

and the spirit world existed

and you were real

and losses were cellos.

Nature Has the Most to Teach

When the oaks distinguish themselves

      

Mists shroud the morning

the field and the woods going brown

this season for closer inspection


Finches sailing fast in flocks

over hoary stands of goldenrod

both losing their brilliance


But the finches don't leave

they stay they feed

they become the field


And the oaks the oaks

distinguish themselves

standing tall with their leaves

raising their voices

when the weather turns

and I and I

in my seventy-fifth year

reprove myself Persevere.

Of People and Seasons

      

Last night's rain

dropped walnuts and fronds


Across the seeded field

the oaks hail each other

in a minor key


Under a fast sky

pocketed with light

the woods begins to look bare


A hawk turns on the wind

I knew it was coming

another ending



To something I have loved

I want more

and a pen to write it down.

Dirt Road

All my changes are there

  

Oh sure

I may have arrived sooner

or at all

if I had lived bituminously

all these years of mud and yellow dust

instead of smoothed viscous intent

but then what ?

—caption by Neil Young

The Poet in Exile Looks Up Long Ago Hearing the Voices of Wild Geese Far Above Him Flying Home

   

All this way with our meeting in my mind

you who never told the whole story

only what came to mind

only the calling of the one note at a time

and where it will carry us together.


The house is the old house and I am here

hoping to catch sight of what has not yet been seen

knowing that this may be the only time.

There will be no one to remember us.

There is no other voice or time.

(A cento comprised entirely of last lines from W. S. Merwin's "Garden Time," 

2016, Copper Canyon Press, his last original volume, composed

while he was losing his eyesight and dictated to his wife, Paula.)

Living Will

Please click to enlarge

Sleep to the troubled

Peace to the grieving

A path to the lost

Faith to the dying

Roses to us

Singed by the frost

Ashes ashes

We all fall down.

Once We Were Golden

   

Once we walked October woods together

               mind in mind

               in a golden depth

breathing the menthol of fall

               illumined and immortal

spider lines across our faces

               when once seemed forever


The trees gathering their shadows under them

               stood guard for the day

watching the warm-blooded pass

               infrared and brief

               in the echoes of crows


              Walking October woods

              needing nothing more

once we were gods together

              trailing heat and gossamer.

A Moment Without Human Sound

With the crickets and the dog

at the top of the field

watching the sunset

to feel the earth roll

I drift into another realm

and when I return

my finger itches from a bite

Venus has joined us

floating in mauve

above Laurel Ridge

the dog sees it too

crickets sing duets

and I tell myself

remember this.

As the Light Goes

Suddenly now the day rushes off

like redwings startled from brittle corn

still standing in the fields where I have watched

the seasons pass for almost half a century

here where all that went before has gone

the same way into the one night

where time means nothing

the leaves blowing down now in gusts

the fields mostly shorn and the skunks

waddling toward their long sleep

somewhere in the dark

I hear a walnut fall.

That Autumn Sensation

Where one can hear a leaf land

The cabin holds the chill of night

four-walled in this warmer morning

moisture from the Gulf has fogged the glass

a stick fire in the stove will clear our gaze

into the woods sighing toward dormancy

and more sacred for it

more sky in the overarching crowns

more dappled shadow on the hushed and cooling ground

the sum of our losses welling up within us

how sadness can rise in the midst of joy

and we want to tell someone if they will stay to hear

how happiness can surprise us as just now

in a commotion of black-and-white wings

and scarlet crests a pair of pileates alights upright

with a scraping of claws from maple to cherry

one follows the other from trunk to trunk

with a cooing and chiseling and we think

perhaps they're companions for life.

—with lines from W. S. Merwin's "From Our Shadows"

An Erasure

Two sleepers in a pine cabin

both us


Horizon in the window

like a spirit level


The coast on her lips

but it was dusk


I will never have a clear mind.

—an erasure of D. Nurkse's "Blackbird Island"

October

 Sometimes it feels like it never happened

walking in morning fog toward the trees

but there was another time

when our hands met and the clock struck

and we lived on the point of a needle like angels

—with lines by W. S. Merwin