All You Want

A Turkeyfoot sky.

What has taken the place in our lives

Of the wind and the moon?

It's cold. It's richly lonely.

All you want is to be safe.

All you want is to be well out of sight,

On the other side of night, 

And you can't stop thinking, thinking.

Soon enough it's going to be

Another kind of adventure,

So sit still and just look at the sky,

Hoping humans will be calm

In our diminishing.

—A cento composed of lines from "Turn Up the Ocean," a final,

expansive collection of poems by Tony Hoagland (1953-2018),

Graywolf Press, 2022.

The Light Through Fog

    

Yet here's the sun

lifting from the quills of morning

through mist-filled woods

thinner now each hour

The sky deepens to the blue you love

midges dance with sunlight in their wings

refraction slips along on gossamer

connecting everything to everything

The spiders too have spun a busy night

and here am I writing in a field

another poem with you in it

so thinly veiled our past shines through

Translucent webbed and hung with dew

backlit by all that happened

with winter still two moons away

yet where are you?

The light through fog is convalescent. 

—Virginia Wolfe

Bucolic

On Sheep Hill

In dairy country

In that golden hour

On a golden day

The people of the land

Are unanimous and joyful

On at least the weather

The pastoral their salvation

And who's to say

That ours is not a golden age?

A Day Full of Character

 

Chestnut boards

A day full of character

a cold wind pouring through the trees

under a starched blue sky

leaves blowing in gusts

across the sparrowing field

browning leaning ever leeward

the first snow having melted

with the brash appearance

of the splendid silent sun

Too early I first thought

but now accept what comes

a welcoming of change

determined as I am to age gracefully

between spurts of anguish

wearing wool earlier each fall

no longer embarrassed

when a rare visitor notices

my patched insulated jeans

hand-stitched and worn in comfort

and pride in how the wear was earned

with what we once called honest work

Letting nature take its course

as leaves pile up against the boards

chestnut salvaged from a fallen barn

today I'll call it winter

and enjoy it while I can

that the dusk may fall now

and the moon rise.

—with a phrase by Whitman and a line by Beckett

Treasure

Ukrainian servicemen, Feb. 27, 2022. Maksim Levin / Reuters.

Treasure your bright quiet day

brothers and sisters of the West

savor your smoke-free sky

the mosaic of leaves at your feet

the music of breezes and birds

loved ones close by

expecting the beauty of snow

on a day without news

uneventful and rare

as once did the women

of occupied Bucha

captive in cellars

under trap doors

knowing the terror of light.

— for Oksana Sulyma

Leaffall Immortals

An enchanted place

It's not just me, ankle-deep in golden leaves,

There are others here, sensed unseen,

The wind chanting in loosening crowns,

The leaves in steady drift, the wind a siren's song.

The shades awaken, spirits that have gone before,

Souls that cleared the way, unwinding from my own,

Rising from an emptied mind, and I am freed

To rise with them through brighter boughs,

Feeling what it must be like, living without limits,

Never to be born and never die, 

Immortal for a moment

On this golden morning among trees.

Just After Rain

Everything looks better in the rain,

The veils of change over the field just after,

The ground ticking with wet,

The stepstones in the dooryard

Shining for awhile, winding away,

Your dark eyes, once so near to mine,

The years it took to find you,

And to lose you

In a place with no frontiers.

Earthly Instinct

High up

the hawks are soaring

across the currents

that float the clouds

Beneath the cooling earth

the snakes are denning

all coil and pause

in a world half dream

While on the surface

the shelling continues

calibrations of a species

fated for gone

Requiem for Father

Mother called me home

It was bound to be

The heavy sheets 

filled the cans in the hedges

I scrubbed the wall

And waited for my brother

We sat on the back porch

Late into the starry night

The end of fear

Is not the end of pain

Sufferers

We are not so far apart

Sadness is the bridge