First Measure

Pause in a storm, January 22, 2012

The storm resumes,

two inches on the ground.

I call her Winter now, cold flame

down from the north, feisty and beautiful,

spinning her incantations

across these worn-down hills

to overstay her welcome once again,

her icy breath upon my neck.

When I open the back door,

she comes in with the animals,

but I don't mind, she's gorgeous as ever,

and I am sure of myself this time around,

for I think I have fuel enough,

I think this frame is strong enough,

I think that I am tough enough

this time around — illusions in a squall.

Poem Beginning with Doubt

Doubt

As manifest night

As the temperature dropped

'Til the misshapen moon

Three days from full

Escaped from the black

Cage of the trees

And we took it to be

A vague prophecy

And we took it to be

First light

Sudden and brief

Ourselves

Sudden and brief

Ourselves

At the edge of freezing

Ourselves

At the edge of flight.

With Gratitude and Reverence

Among the gratitudes

Hills

even in

cold wind

Sky

even with

the smoke

Woods

even with

dead ash

Fire

even with

the tending

Friends

even in

long absence

Kin

even at

this distance

Dog

even with

the shed

Books

even still

unread

Hot water

even with

the wait

Sight

even where's

my readers

Poems

even with

an ache

Bike

because

the legs

Music

because

it's magic

Neighbors

because

they'd help

The dark

because

it's dark

You

because

because

Time

because

it's ours.

Freezing Rain

The rain turned hard,

pierced deep the pond,

soon to join its like

as one firm plane

we skated poorly on.

Back to my own devices then,

the shovel hanging from its spikes,

the sledge on its head in the stable

built from hand-hewn beams

after the barn's demise —

Deep snow, hard rain, the weight.

It woke us when it fell,

committed to each other still

in mixed precipitation.

Collapse shook the ground.

Woodland

 

     

On the last night she could speak

she dreamed of rocking on the cabin porch,

rocking in the old mission rocker

her great-great grandmother had rocked in,

and how it all creaked as leaves fell.

How it all creaks now

as shadows swing 'round,

woodland beings finding peace

where we can, rocking,

desperately native.

Valley

Steady wind and wooded hill

Jeering in the night,

The damper flopping in the flu,

Colder air and me the same.

The front moves in.

The house exhales.

What is this emptiness we share

Which we cannot name?

Other Days

 

Some days all of it seems true,

Stillness on the hill,

The perfect falling line.

Other days I wonder

If you wonder, too.

Gift

Sugar camp, mailbox, Upper Turkeyfoot

Unexpected marvel,

only you can judge

which of your friends

hide behind the miracles —

pleasure, passion —

lovely by first-class mail

when you are far away.

Even a person

who has everything

needs a poem now and then.

—an "erasure" of a gift subscription promo for The Threepenny Review.

Some Like It Darker

          

Entering the afterglow of the year,

reading in candlelight among the sinews of trees

where the hawks have nested and the owls perched,

the wind 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.

—Title after a song by Leonard Cohen

World News

We worked until sunset.

I've read too much. The planet. The people.

It's worse than I thought.

But today I worked in the woods until sunset,

cutting firewood in unseasonable warmth,

and I saw no one.

I stopped in time to watch the sky deepen

from gold to red in quiet solitude,

staying until the first stars blazed

in the violet chill — this was the world,

 and I saw no one,

The fathomless sky, these woods, this field,

light, gravity, the mystery of consciousness,

spinning through the infinite void

on a hurtling sphere in an expanding universe,

and I saw no one.

The calls of geese, unseen behind the hill,

brought me back, jets nicked the west with neon,

the dog leaned warm against my leg, and surely

for some others, impermanently blessed,

some one.

Back to Now

 

Such expectations

we had for ourselves,

waiting for our moment,

as the small things passed.

Day breaks in the contrails

behind the walnut trees.

Finitude

Script of  the finite seasons

On a wooded hill,

reading old poets,

old poets looking for answers

near the ends of their lives,

old enough now myself

to try to know

if the cold rain through bare crowns

holds ancient truths,

if curled leaves in the desiccated field

keep old secrets,

the chill and the finitude

of life being what is,

as I have known it to be,

my own heart, too,

an ancient text

without explanation.