Whiparound

The last morning

of the old year

dismantles a mind

consciously ordered

to take the long view

of only one morning

about to begin

its eightieth turn,

almost elliptical,

surely orthogonal,

a thin strip of life

lived alone,

as if it were real.

Lephart Road Metaphorics

Our ride cut short

in winter's tarnished light,

far enough along

to rest

against a weathered barn,

slow-vanishing by rain.

A cold wind shakes the briars.

We will not be spared.

Muse in a Cornfield

 

She walks coatless toward me

in the pale landscape of a dream

across a stubbled field

windswept with snow.

I have come to teach you

to live in imagination,

she says. This way.

You have struggled long enough.

Is she not cold, I ask,

and how will we begin?

Never again, she says,

and I follow her

through the treeline

and over the hill.

When I look back,

I can see my house

close to the horizon.

Smoke rises from the chimney.

The fire is still alive.

As if it were real

—after and with the ultimate line from Louise Glück's "Song."

Prose from the Solstice

     My tracks in and my tracks out in the year's briefest light. Yet, in my own company, which includes the cats and the dog, the day felt as full as ever.

     The dog ran the deer trails, nose to the snow. The Pinkertons, as I've come to call the cats, stood guard at the breathing holes, totems to lethal patience.

     Thoreau was there, too. I read him by candlelight until the shades of night took possession of the woods. We live too fast and coarsely. And he was right, as usual. Even still, even still, and worse.

     He wrote that in 1852 when, in the village, sleighs were propped on poles to keep the rails from freezing to the ground, which seems neither fast nor coarse. O, if he could haunt the internet just now and see what we've become, our accounts far from fitting on our thumbnails.

     We left the woods at last, the Pinkertons, the dog, and me. Clouds in the west had arranged themselves in converging bars according to the tactics of the sky, and the pink of the solstice sunset had lifted off of them and onto corrugations overhead; the snow-covered hill itself submitted to the sentiments of endings and blushed a little.

     We took the long way home. Slower, finer. You could call it a resolution. You could call it a small beginning.

Time Enough

 

I hope this reaches you in time,

before the ridden earth

spins us 'round the fire again,

before it flings us into space,

centripetal adagio,

is there not still time to care again,

to be kind in our passing,

you with your back to the sea,

to all you've left behind,

and me on this same hill

where I've grown old watching sunsets?

We remember how it was, indelible,

and is there not still time enough

for each of us to bleed forgiveness?

High Up

 

Honed edge of hope in a young moon

All that comes between us is shadow and light

Love and death out of the tangled earth

These last cold days more beautiful

Our deep, deep flight.

Even in the Darkest Days

On the sill above the sink

I snapped them off as I passed,

reaching out the window

as I turned into the yard.

In the barn I found an old bottle,

filled it with well water,

and sat it on the sill above the sink.

Given a bit of warmth,

even with the least attention,

you never know what can happen,

As with us.

Needful

Sugar Loaf in the distance behind a young maple. Click to enlarge.

 

Privacy, solitude,

as needful we come,

wounded by news,

to observe the hours of the universe,

away from the cameras and drones.

How often at sunset the sky opens.

—The sun sets behind Sugar Loaf on the winter solstice.

Thin

 

This limbo of early December,

I feel it in the woods in light snow

that would be a drizzling rain

off the mountain, between rain and snow,

between seasons, between growth and decay, 

life and death, between worlds — thin,

the Irish say of such places and times,

closer than usual to another reality

where spirits and memories dwell.

All day the bare trees touch each other.

Winter

Takeoff

She came back

with fractals in her hair

to keep me with her this time.

The frozen ground.

The blinding sky.

Young again forever.