Gratitudes, Even So

Sky

even under

the jet weave

Hills

even after

the leaffall

Fire

even when

the cherry's green

Friends

even in

long absence

Kin

even at

this distance

Dogs

even after

clean ups

Books

even still

unread

Hot water

even with

the power bill

Legs

even when

the knee aches

Words

even though

hard won

Jackets

even if

too many

Sight

even where's

my readers

Film

even with

sad endings

You

because

why else

Music

because

it's magic

The dark

because

it's dark

Time

because

it's ours.

Among the gratitudes

Echo

Dusk on a fallow field

Gunfire at sunset

rends the fallow silence,

frightening the old dog

more than the new dog.

The old dog is me,

and I've heard the news.

High Plains, Wild Horses

Tosca Suto photo

In late fall's spare expanse,

the bottle passed around the fire,

you chose to complicate your life.

Antelope leaped in the sunset.

Wild horses, drawn by the only light

for miles around, thrust in their big heads

through the shed's propped windows,

eyes like windless, moonlit seas,

nostrils flared and steaming breath,

humans up to their necks in heated water.

In such a world love-at-first-sight

was powerful and true,

even after forty years.

And then ten more,

and then ten more,

When, in an early winter,

you tried to match your thoughts

to the spareness of the season,

to flattened fields, to woods stripped bare,

to less and less of everything,

and there she stood, first love and ever dear,

High Plains snowflakes in her hair

in a storm that quenched the fires

in Yellowstone and left you burning

under cold and arid stars

in a desert of your own making.

Basic

 

Call it winter, atomic child, aging and basic,

food enough, heat enough, mind enough,

and a dog,

never enough love.

The Oldest in Memory

Entering the afterglow of the year,

reading in candlelight at 5 p.m.

among the sinews of trees

where the hawks have nested

and the owls perched,

the wind a cold basket

carrying lost souls

back to me again

with all their flaws

and kindnesses intact,

and as I did as a child,

I feel the touch of kin.

Darker now, a comfort.

The wind turns up the light of the stars.

—with a line from "Rain Moving In," by John Ashbery

Rain

We walked in the rain

Because it was raining.

There was no other life.

—with a line by Jane Hirschfield

Nature Has the Most to Teach

 

In my element, wiping my face with my cap,

I sit in my great grandmother's rocker,

its arms chewed by squirrels, sawdust in my cuffs,

crows complaining of my presence

at the cabin I built half my life ago,

done for now with the bowsaw,

firewood stacked on the porch,

nuthatches alighting with a scraping

of tiny claws to check me out, upside down,

then plucking a single seed from the feeder,

and off they go with a popping of wings

to shell it and eat it in a tall oak —

advice from the natural world,

sampling life one seed at a time.

I uncrumple a list from my pocket,

so much to do while there's still time,

but I let the sun drop without my own haste,

busy admiring the nuthatches

in their single-seeded, upside-down approach,

savoring each gift into twilight.

Evening moves cool through bare trees.

—Title from a line by Jane Kenyon

Come Morning

 

The moon need not be full

                    to be lovely,

Need not be crescent

                    to be poignant.

Wind, come morning,

                    brings down the last of the oaks,

Bursts of sienna crossing the field

                    with a sound from the confines of time.

In a lifetime of desire

                    to know our universe,

How little we understand

                    about its most common elements,

                    light and water, gravity and each other.

Come morning, we step through our doorway

                    into incomprehensible beauty.

It's not so much the wind and the moon,

                   it's their rising we love.

Shadows in November

 

The landscape is prepared for winter,

but there is no snow.

Such is November, the month

of withered leaves and bare branches,

the ghosts of plants almost as filling

to the eye as have been the green

in this month of shadows briefly seen,

dark flashes just beyond the limits of vision,

and you can't be sure you've seen anything at all.

First, we need a place to stand,

and last, a place to stay.

I've had both for 50 years, a conscious choice,

hoping, when it is my time, for a natural burial

in the ground I've lived upon,

an honorable progression, a rhymed demise,

a nutrient for oaks and goldenrods,

and a shadow worthy of these hills,

just beyond the limits of vision.

Live long enough alone

in one place and time,

and you may see such things.

A family of crows rides the wind.

A gibbous moon rises in the briars.