Solo

No road to solitude,

just a narrow path and a ducking under

in an envelope of silence and mist

as the ground cools, more sky in the crowns

each day now, a delicate lace overhead.

You left your phone in the kitchen

and carry a book for the cabin porch,

but you don't open it, another leaf

about to release, another barrell-rolling cherry,

another spiraling maple, another tumbling birch.

You hear them tap the earth

when you hold your breath, it can be that quiet

at home in these Pennsylvania woods,

alone with your instincts and thoughts,

if you dare.

Sooner Twilight

In sooner twilight

a southeast shift

freshened the rooms

and loosened a walnut

that fired off a round

on the logshed's steel roof

jolting me back to the present

and I haven't thought of you since

until now.

The Ground

Fallow

The sky presses down.

It takes a long time

for the ground to be land,

a field returning to woods,

verdant and bent by the rain,

While in the old house

a woman in love rises early,

leaves with her shoes in her hand,

in the dream of a man still asleep

Who has learned to accept

that everything ends,

but finds that no reason

not to begin

In a field returning to woods,

verdant and bent by the rain.

For the ground to be land,

it takes a long time.

The sky presses down.

Unconditional

We said it

each in our turn

belief undoing

our disbelief

Of course

it couldn't last

years and years and years

and yet

It snowed today

deep on the hillside

where I walked your name

visible from space

Satellites

in continual sunlight

sometimes falling

into the rising sea

A.I. (Artificial Ignorance)

Seclusion as long as it lasts

The lesser god Elon,

who took away the Stars,

offers me The Link,

to which I say fuck off,

condemning myself

to engineless Limbo

without money or rockets or influence,

no orbiting views of troop movements

or hurricanes or boreal forests in flames,

proof no longer required

of rabid greed and cruelty,

and who needs to see the coasts sink

as icebergs fall into hot seas,

desperate millions in flight,

better to watch from my porch

the disappearance of songbirds,

alone until the Sheriff arrives,

witness to the local Extinction.

Cycling Down

Evening ride in Upper Turkeyfoot

 

Our faces part the air

downhill on a country road

in solitudes of speed

that elevate the spirit

and free the imagination,

cooler through the swales,

red barns and white houses,

broad foreheads of cows,

baled hay in wagons,

blackbirds crossing field to field,

wild turkey chicks running into the corn,

sunlight in the tops of thunderheads,

the universe expanding

infinitely in all directions,

yet we are central still.

In the windrush you may think

you hear me breathe your name,

but I am barely here,

and you not at all.

Parabolic

September in Upper Turkeyfoot

The light that happens in September

When at last we broke our promises,

How much further could we bend ?

Firewood stacked and drying in the shed,

Floating cobwebs catching sunlight

Post to post along the cabin porch,

Sunlight silver in the hemlocks' open arms,

Sunlight gilding tiers of oaks

When you said divorce,

Sunlight bending through the glass

To where you'd stood, once upon a time,

At Webster's Second on its stand,

Golden head-to-toe and unabridged,

Such light we'd known

Now tangent to the afternoon,

Now bending toward the void.