Perspective

 

When in uncertain times the wind is raw,

and it's hard to know how much to be afraid,

find a field on a hill, find a dog and a chair

when the sun's going down, and just sit there,

finding once more the dream in the awe.

Walking Among

where woodland creatures diverge

          

I come from the house,

the one by itself with the wood smoke rising

from the old brick chimney—you remember—

you can see it there across the broken field,

broken by winter half done,

those are my tracks, you can see where I walk,

my tracks and the dog's, and once you top the hill

you can see where the coyotes walk, too, and the fox,

one fox, I think, a smaller print, each back step

exactly in the front step, such orderly beings,

the dog and I are orderly, too, I'd say, I mean

we walk the same snow-crusted field each day

on the same path leading into the woods,

the dog nosing under the flattened asterbones

in the same pockets as yesterday

where the white-footed mice live,

following their own small routines,

and here at the edge of the woods you can see

where the deer join the path, living their lives,

all of us here living our lives, sometimes sharing the path,

sometimes diverging, each with our purposes,

the deer and the fox and the mice more in the present

with fewer distractions, accepting things as they are

without wondering how, or why, or what if—

they belong more than me, I'll confess

I've felt like a visitor as long as I can remember,

these creatures fit better, more at home, the paths

they make better suited to the contours of the earth,

and accompanied, surely, by fewer ghosts.

Don't you think that is so? I think you'd agree.

What did you think?

What would you have thought?

Is it cold being wind?

How pretty with the snow flying in you.

Something's Not Right

Something's not right

something's off-key in my mind

slushlight and dampdark

the night makes no difference

the ash bucket full

the house overheats

the website is crashed

the governor taken to task

everyone's pissed

the hills put on their black masks

children are handcuffed face down

something's off-key and unkind

and it bothers me all of the time.

—with three lines from Charles Wright's "Laguna Blues"

Projectionist

Trailing Virga

        

So much time in the dark

screening the errors of my life

to run as short subjects

between feature presentations

in the empty twelve-screen theater

of my late docudrama marathon

real-to-reeling.

Stonestacker

Robinson Jeffers at Hawk Tower, 1939

And there you are, again,

                    The troubled midnight

                    And the noon's repose,

How can it be thirty years?

                    And why still?

Your facebook page, I could say,

                    Led to my dream.

                    But, no. It was the other way around.

At least I kept it short:

                    Meteors are not needed

                   Less than mountains,

I typed, stacking stones on your wall,

                    Posting Jeffers,

                    Western Pennsylvania boy,

                    Brilliant and flawed in the tower he built

                    Overlooking a violent sea,

Each salt-soaked stone he carried up

                    Into the wind at the top of his cliff

                    From out of the low detonation,

See it flex in his arms and his mind,

                    All cord and flash, stone after stone,

                    Year after year, storm after storm after storm,

Behold the sinews of a belabored heart.

—with lines from T.S. Eliot's "La Figlia che Piange" and

Robinson Jeffers' "Shine, Perishing Republic."

Nate Farbman photo / The LIFE Collection.

The Uses of Democracy

Democracy Saved,

the headlines read;

a mountain recluse

returns to the trees,

swinging his Keens through the drifts

backing the hillwind.

He'll walk beyond sunset,

sunk in a reverie, into the dark,

no light but the dusk,

no electricity, just stars

pulsing above empty limbs,

and later,

an inextinguishable moon,

sensations laid bare,

echos in the chest,

like the hurt notes of owls,

and of souls,

yearning to be touched.

One Twenty Twenty One

I stepped outside 

to hear a bell I recognized

out of another season

an ictus of cold wind

left over from yesterday

tied the hills together

in unexpected sun

clouds divided and sped

then a wren who had chosen to stay

wild singing

another of the voices without question

boots in the snow

face in the sun

Laurel Ridge lingering on the threshold

and I heard it again

without understanding

yet without division

in the new day.

—after Merwin's "The Wren"

Twilight Snow

Young Moon

 

Long, long twilight on fresh snow,

the field of life in lavendar

a boundless plain

little seen or dreamed,

no death or disappointment

at its end,

or so it seemed.

Caged in a Heart

Old Beech

Up the wooded slope to the cabin

with the wind over me

                    breathy chords

                    in bare crowns

already beaded and waiting for spring

past the old beech

                    multi-trunked

                    elephantine

heaving the rocky ground over centuries

dark scars of initials

                    caged in a heart

blackened and swollen with years

                    regret for the carving

                    mistakes of the young

                    forty years gone

fingers cold from these notes

amid crusts of old snow

imprinted by grouse and by deer

                    by fox and by mice

                    by naive expectation

as if unions were endless

as windsongs in crowns 

                    encrusted with promise.

                    

Inward Sailor: Getting Nowhere But Older

Ballycotton, Ireland. James Hollway photo.

Always the same,

same sea, same dangers,

islands, each with its woman.

Which was the one,

improbable, remote, true,

he kept sailing home to?

—an erasure of Merwin's "Odysseus"

Circling

 

The day nascent in a sea of tomorrows

underfoot the solid earth

all around the emptiness of space

I take my eyes to the fields

to walk the frost in a breath cloud

asking myself how shall I live

what shall I write

as if I were just beginning.

—after W. S. Merwin

Something Human

Sara Evans photo

         

Afield in a flow

of January air and January light

practicing zazen

in a wild imperative of peace

I felt your hand on my shoulder

lightly and warm

so sure it was you I almost spoke

and maybe I did

maybe the echo in the woods

was my own

my own wild cry

of a gregarious animal

too long separated from being loved.

Seeing Each Other Again

 

Old snow

         

More change each day

in winter than summer,

new snow to old snow

to no snow and back again

as frost sinks deeper

in the swelling ground,

the dry stone wall

nearing its fall.

How will we look to each other

after so long?

Will the shot keep us warm?

Is it far?

Confession

 

Then there was someone else

whose face and voice I can't forget

and the memory of her

is like a jail I'm trapped inside.

I read those lines awake again

before first light

and comforted by truth

I slept.

It snowed a little overnight

and when I raised the blind

the trees stood separate

on powdered ground.

—with lines from Tony Hoagland's "How It Adds Up"

Projectionist

 

So much time in the dark

screening the errors of my life

to run as short subjects

between feature presentations

in the nine-screen theater

of myl ate docudrama marathon

real to reeling.

Slower, Longer

If it were spring

People would be happier

Then let it be so-named

The icefall and the leaffall

Slow patterns on wet snow

So much is how it's framed.

Ice Storm

 

A cold rain froze

on what hung in the air

that first day

of a newborn year

clearing the field

Warm-blooded beasts

tucked in their asylums

squirrels in their nests

mice in their burrows

men in their groundless opinions

The Highest Point in Pennsylvania: A Sad Yarn

Mt. Davis in the farthest distance

           

From this field 

when the leaves have fallen

you can see over the corn stubble,

across these worn-down mountains,

and all the way to Mt. Davis,

the highest point in Pennsylvania.

With a good pair of binoculars

you might even make out

the locally-famous fire tower,

which of course is even higher

up the zigzag metal stairs,

dizzying for see-through spacing,

Each thundering step

ringing like a kettle drum

with increased risk

until you reach the top,

breathing hard, heart thumping,

and chance it all, or so it seems,

proposing there,

above the grounded millions,

you sentimental hasmuk.

The highest ask in Pennsylvania,

the leap, she shrugs it off.

She's unafraid of heights but is no jumper.

She offers you instead a parachute of sorts,

honored, humbled, all the rest,

to break your fall,

so you can drop and roll,

bloodying your knees,

but avoiding permanent disability,

kind words because, as everyone knows,

she is kind and has the common touch,

and they are grateful for her patronage,

and they thank her very much.

Still, it's a long way down.

—with a nod near the end to Simon and Garfunkel.