Last Summer's Flowers

1.

Last summer's flowers on the sill,

desiccated and fragile—

the goldenrod hoary and gray,

the daisy bowed and petalbare.

Ah, but the wild sunflower,

wizened though it be,

is still insisting on yellow,

and the civilized zinnia

is still blushing mauve,

even when losing its head,

bless their calyxes.

2. 

This summer the survivors

of The Class of '63

will gather at a faux plantation

in Western Pennsylvania

for what the committee has dubbed

"Our Last Big Reunion,"

meaning only informal sit-arounds

from here on out for the last of us,

no business casual, no honey-glazed ham,

no peach cobbler, no party boat tours

of the sprawling, shallow lake

that now floods the fields and the woods

where the last glacier stopped,

and where we parked with our dates.

3.

Am I going ?

Perhaps.

I wonder if she'll be there, the girl

with the honey-colored ponytail

that stunned me in first grade.

I hear she uses a walker these days.

Another who long inhabited my dreams

will not be there, I'm told, now confined to a chair.

And what of the ghosts of dead teammates,

the rangy shortstop and the quick centerfielder ?

How many lifetimes in a life ?

4.

So, which am I ?

Certainly the zinnia,

tame and losing its head.

Maybe I'll drop a few pounds and appear

to see myself in the faces of the others,

those fine old children, to remember myself

in the thrill of youth, first loves

with limitless futures, and the ultimate

disillusions we've all come to know.

Or maybe I'll stay where I'm settled,

half a century in these mountains,

for good or for ill, watching

the robins yank worms from the yard,

wild daisy, wild sunflower, wild solidago,

all of us in the same blue vase.

Ragged Sky

Ragged sky,

like smoke in moonlight,

as if the fields were burning,

sleep if you can

in your watch cap,

the shredding wind,

the howl of March,

a chill in an empty house

flooded with the past,

the mind in its small boat

on a rocky sea,

you've come to a place

where the present

is your only chance,

the future a fiction,

a short story at best,

where the bravest among us

are the oldest.

Recovery

Standing at the edge of the blade

in a void of lost time

the pillow damp with receding dreams

unsteady on your feet 

at the center of a distant universe

you go on.

Starlinked

Space.com screenshot, March 17, 2023

Chimney smoke a plume above me

in what I still call the heavens

on this equinoctial evening,

the old elms behind me

done with their tragic gestures,

calm now as the front settles in,

the high pale clouds opening

to the black velvet of infinity

crossed by a caravan of satellites

in unsettling procession.

As a boy I assumed this world

too vast to spoil ever,

awed to think so then

and easy to remember now,

nostalgic on this spring night.

First the air.

Then the oceans.

Then the sky.

Yet grateful still in my own field

as the heavens deepen,

the horizon clean and unbroken

against the dimming west,

for as long as it lasts.

Across the valley, hardly a light anywhere 

on the slopes of Laurel Ridge,

then not even that.

—On the passing overhead of Elon Musk's SpaceX Starlink internet satellites

Music for When the Music is Over

In March woods

With absences and wind,

Every sound is music.

Tracks in late snow

Tell me where I've been,

But there's no going back.

—Title a line from the Ricardo Phillips poem, "The Peacock"

Fallow, A Conceit

A field left be,

abandoned to drifts,

to roots, to tunneling voles,

deer-crossed, crow-flown,

trampled by mice, 

healing itself under heaven,

our faith, our natural sedation,

now fallow, now solitary,

the low hum of time

slow and uneventful

without us.

As Winter and Spring Collide

Paxlovid and Simic

The robins have been back a week.

The snow turns into rain.

Buds thicken the woods,

A ruddy mist

Against rain-blackened trunks

Seen through the kitchen panes

In my fourth day of isolation,

Differing from my solitude

of the last ten years

only by the recommendation

of the Center for Disease Control

and the three big pills I swallow

morning and night for five days

under Emergency Use Authorization.

The wind picks up.

I read. I wind the pendulum clock.

I tell myself I'm feeling better.

The medallion swings behind etched glass,

The ratchet wheel releasing one tooth at a time,

Escapement and detent saying,

Love me, love me, love me, love me.

The cough has stopped.

The spring winds down.

The rain turns back to snow.

 

Aftermath No. 22

He looked for her eyes

In a masked world,

Digital, deep, and dark,

Everywhere he went,

Which was really nowhere at all.

One at a Time

Waiting its turn

Nothing decided.

Nothing resolved.

So much to think about

with nothing to say,

the sun lower without me,

lackluster.

Evening drifts cool through the trees,

nuthatches and chickadees piping,

popping the air under the slow-dying pine

for a late perch on the feeder

to carry off one sunflower seed at a time

into the hemlocks, then back for another,

safe in the dusk from the hawk

who strikes in broad light,

the small, gray birds nourished and content,

weaving their poetry one seed at a time.

I sat until dark,

then loaded firewood by headlamp,

one split at a time.

Orion rose out of the woods.

I sat on the porch, Uni-ball in hand.

Often the last line comes first,

and the rest follow,

one at a time.

March Awakening

Expecting blackbirds

My levitation,

Suspended between worlds,

Invisible hands lifting me up,

Half dream, half real,

To float on the currents of morning,

On the melodies of light,

Strong spirits of place and experience

Vying for attention,

To subside in birdsong soon enough.

Far off,  a rush of wings.