Pax Universus

Learn

to be

alone

My Girl

New York City

 

Kind, smart, and brave,

Felled in the heart of the city she loved

Unable to speak

Until just a moment ago

As I struggled to sleep

In the house where she grew

Hold me till it comes

She said in my dream

As I had held her then

She was so light in my arms.

Ennui

The days grow harsh,

how the sun makes everything black

but the snow and the sky,

How the nights call to be fed,

roaring in the woods as if starved

for the souls of the living,

And on every hill,

the massed sighs of the lost,

how they shake this old farmhouse,

Its adzed timbers creaking around me

as faces of the earth recede in the dark,

how the wind tells me there's no place to hide.

The Bends

 

We surfaced too quickly

What we thought

How we felt

Who we loved

And they sealed us apart

Our blood boiling.

The words are coming out all weird. — Radiohead

When the Storm Stopped

In the silence after snowfall,

The stunning presence of the few,

The artistry of wind,

A divinity of emptiness.

Just you

 

Dog Star

We, alike, think,

Parsing distance, dark skies,

Commas, their tails,,

Decades ago

We missed each other;

Celestial proof

We heard the barking.

Orion was closer.

Heat rises..

January

Shoe print of a child

In the concrete by the cellar door

Where the snow blows in

I see red canvas

Hole at the toe

T'aoists believe

First you must be empty

Before you can be filled

Polar Vortex

Yesterday at sunset

I snowshoed over the hill

With you on my mind

We had the world to ourselves

I wrote this today in the sun

With you on my mind

We had the world to ourselves

Eyes closed to the fire in the sky

Shadow Crows

Shadow crows crossing

shadow men crossing

the snow-covered field

tracking the path

over the voles in their nests

passing a window

where a 50-year friend

propped in a bed for the view

fades in a world without words

glass over shadow casting a pall

pale on the hill

forgive them for taking

the longer way home.

Beginning Always in Darkness

The Pillars of Creation, an active star-forming region within the
Eagle Nebula. (2017 NASA image from the Hubble Telescope)

 

The wind rises,

searching the night

for something to engage,

drops down against the beetled ashes

falling over power lines

that cross these wooded hills.

The house shuts down.

The lights go off. The fire goes out.

No fans, no motors, no glowing screens.

Just the coin that arcs behind etched glass,

the heirloom mantel clock,

the swing of time that's calmed

five generations.

That's how quiet the house becomes.

The earth floats on without a sound,

but on this hill,

a beating heart,

one beating heart,

as yet another year comes 'round.

—with three lines by Joy Williams