Unsettled Past Perigee

 

We missed the Supermoon

the last of its kind for awhile

full and close to the earth

but we felt its effects

in our own ebb and flow

moon of lost footing

moon of imbalance

moon of the drought and the fires

moon of alternative truth

moon of haunted dreams

moon of the dwindling light

moon of the gathering tribes

moon of the mope and the gloat

moon of the lengthening night

moon of the shadows on snow

moon of this life while we have it

moon of the uses of consciousness

moon of our counting

moon of our sums and remainders

moon of what's here

moon of our faith in our neighbors

moon of the owls in the dark

moon of the wind in the hemlocks

moon of the sweet constant music

moon of our more than enough.

Living in Sky

Sitting on a hill

at the bottom of the sky,

the clouds and the blue

that travel with us

as we circle a star

that circles in a galaxy

that spins in an infinite void,

we feel in the grip

of something right,

something intense,

something elusive

that slips away

as soon as we try

to say it.

We let it be.

Elsewhere

Knockanore Mountain, Ireland

          

Dissolving

into the calm

of sunset and mist,

I hold my breath

and listen,

the ocean inside

calling me back

to the cliffs

overlooking the sea.

Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland

      

      

(Top photo by Michael Cummins, bottom photo from the public domain)

A Trick of Daybreak

A trick of daybreak

caught us in the shadows

between gray and blue,

our slide almost complete

since Franklin keyed the storm,

nostalgic for the dark,

and soon to return

to whispers in candlelight.

We'll call it afterglow.

In a Country of Strangers

November 5, 2024

The field is fewer,

tall and leaning,

our shadows are long,

but we are small,

leaving the woods,

surrendered to sky

in the buoyant dim,

longing for reason,

slowly depleting

where all things succumb,

heaven vast and void,

if ever we all return.

Early November

  

Paisleyed with frost

   

When the furnace awoke me

it was early November

but late in my life,

and lost in the dark,

I needed to steady myself.

This was the window,

Paisleyed with frost,

and that was the night,

Jupiter leering

in the black woods.

This was Pandora,

streaming New Age,

but the box

had been opened

long ago.

And that was my hand,

holding the pen,

touching no one.

Workshop of the Mind

Cellos at sunset

Remnants in jars on the shelves

Memories backlit

In the Company of Oaks

Holding their leaves

In the company of oaks,

bright-bronzed and taller

than the lowering sun,

slow dancing in the chill wind,

last trees in the woods still awake,

holding their leaves

when most of the others

have turned themselves

into pillars of light,

the oaks holding their leaves

as if their lives depended on it,

sighing in honeyed light,

holding their leaves

close to their bones,

loving what is mortal

while they can,

and when the time comes,

letting it go.

—after Mary Oliver's In Blackwater Woods

In a Fallow Field

 

I waited

in the goldenrod field

bearded by autumn

mature and hoary

at the end of function

in the warming sun

I waited

and drifted back

into that dream

where my daughter

was not dead.

The Earth Rolls Back

The earth rolls back,

the big red sun

sinks behind your ridge,

and you seem farther gone,

the valley blue between us,

deeper, wider with nightfall.

I watch it go down, I try

to empty my mind

in the failing light.

I do not know which to prefer,

the owl calling in twilight,

or just after.

—with a thought from Wallace Stevens

Sundown in the Maples

 

Under a sugar

In my eightieth October

I think I know what's coming—

This world will become more and more beautiful

Until I can't stand it anymore

And vanish into it,

One with the earth in the end.

—with lines by D. Nurkse

Take Down the Sun

Take down the sun.

          Put it in your heart.

Take down the moon.

          Put it in your belly.

Take down the Big Dipper.

          Merge with the Northern Star.

— based on ancient Taoist texts, translated by Deng Ming-Dao

Spellbound

Mid-October. Click to enlarge.

By twilight and owlcall

we fell asleep on the porch,

side by side.

When we awoke

it was this life,

smelling of wet dog.

Find a Place

Sugar Camp

   

Where the air is fresh

Slip into serenity

The point is to live

Grief

New York City, April 2008

This was the city

Magnolias fell on concrete

This was the farewell

When Long Enough in October Woods

The mind comes running

Like a wild thing and lies down

On a bed of leaves

—with lines by Mary Oliver

Dig

I opened the earth

And breathed a thousand secrets

So sweet a perfume

As Evening Takes Hold

Less difference now

Between the shadow in me

And all the shadows

Succumbing to the Spectacle

click to enlarge

A season passes

Shrouded in crimson and dew

A season arrives

The Coming Winter of Our Relative Content

Woolly Bear

Wiseworm of the snows

Forecasts a warm November.

Celebrate the light.

We Heard an Owl

Unsteady afoot

In fall's woodland mosaic,

Disoriented.

It's not that we're lost,

Just quiet, nothing to say.

The owl spoke for us.

Equinox

I have travelled far,

Isolated in a field,

Goldenrod, and time.

 

Silent Majority

We were about to

Say something like a windrush,

And then we didn't.

Trying not to be

Afraid explains everything.

Call out to someone.

—a cento with lines from the collected poems (1975-1997) of James Galvin

Drought Abstract

In greener times

 

  

  This hot summer Rain

  Is the tallest girl I know

  And I miss her laugh

Aged Summer

 

The field wants for rain

In an absence of Monarchs

A presence of pain

Ten-Farm Loop

click to enlarge

Flyways and biway,

The few vehicles that pass

Hold waving neighbors.

Heaven a Thinner Sea

 

Ocean overhead,

Fiery urchin in the sky,

Breathers underair.

Plain Spoken

click to enlarge

        

Red barns, white houses,

Country people holding on,

Quiet and prayerful.

Crickets Sing

 Deep in goldenrod

Where we once spread a blanket

And entered the sky.

We will remember when Lethe is frozen that life to us was worth ten heavens.

—Osip Mandlestam, 1918

Anniversary

They watch from the porch

Flyways golden above them

Her hand on his arm

 

Old Best Friends

 

Dear longstanding friends

Late summer's wilting flowers

Lovelier with age

Dry Spell

Parched maples and oaks

Whispering to each other

False rumors of rain.

Others Know this Landscape

Cash Valley, MD

 

Surely there are those

Who only watch, and watching,

Wander off in mist.

Abandoned

What is it about

Desertion and emptiness

That echoes in us?

Life as a Summer Day

Peaceful near the end

No more pounding engines past

No more yellow dust

Late Summer

 

from the public domain

  Under a starched sky

  Memories and hover flies

  Kiss me in the sun

Under the Runaway Sun

Leaves on the porch boards

The old-fashioned universe

Ever expanding

On the Ridges after Rain

Mood Indigo, Laurel Mountains

So, there you are in your life,

and here am I in mine,

mist lifting from the valley,

ridge from ridge obscured.

Mood indigo.

What saved us from each other,

our flaws too well-aligned,

you in the middle verses,

me in the final phrase?

Mood indigo.

—with a nod to Duke Ellington

Afield in the Dark

 

The night sky

My singular reality

Fireflies extinguished

A mosquito at my ear

A broadcast of stars

Sometimes you visit me there

In my secret life in the sky

A late summer dirge

Accompanied faintly

By crickets far below

Arrhythmic

wilhei / Pixabay

Even if the survivors

dismantle this lightning,

I can no longer tell

if I am alive,

absence my darkness,

leaped and drawn,

indestructible.

—an erasure of the 450-word poem Lichen by Jacques Dupin, as translated from the French by Harry Matthews.

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

Tortured soul,

Desperate for meaning,

Beauty where we find it

Has to be reason enough

 T

At the Confluence of Wonder and Sadness

Kelly, 1975

  Hooded woodland child

  present and absent

  clutching daisies

  at my center

  hovering

  even after.

Walking the Berryfield

Come with me

into the berryfield,

you and me and the dog,

not a human structure in sight

and no one to be met

under a hot tin sky,

blackberries in our path,

brambles tasting our blood

as we will taste

their sugars of the sun,

each dark bead reflecting our world, if we look close enough—

our dull star, our shadowy countenance, a thousand

globed realities on each thorned stalk.

The dog sniffs out small creatures in the briars

living out their lives moment to moment,

as we would live out ours, staining our fingers,

wounded in our passage, pausing in silent places

as night gathers in the surrounding woods,

our spirits free, our heads more in heaven

than our feet are on the earth,

moment to moment,

walking the berryfield.

Weathermen

Woods floor in record heat

Raised fists on crazed ground

In our hottest July.

How many more summers?

How many more rains?

Into the Light

Forget explanations.

The secret of the end

Unwinds on a country road,

Not in the sky.

Love and death, love and death,

We all want clarity.

Can it all only be a succession

Of random tragedies?

Her face, her face,

The most beautiful of secrets.

Ride then into the light

While the light lasts.

Ephemera

 

Stopped in the yard

by the loosestrife's flow

arc of the day

path of a life

line of an era

perfect bell curve

of wins and mistakes.

Searching for answers

everything is a sign.

Reunion

How could it be any different?

Beyond the superficial, we have not changed.

You are still with him, and I am still with me.

O, we had our time, our little loving streak.

And then it was done. So let's just sit awhile

Quietly in each other's company

As the fireflies rise, the valley cloaked in sunset,

The honed edge of the moon descending,

Bullfrogs chanting in the darkened pond.

Let's just sit awhile in the paradise of evening

Before we gather our hearts and go,

Other promises to keep.

The Way I Am

Good company

It was the smooth warm stone against my back

at the edge of the goldenrod field.

It was the cold spring that ran through violets

in the grapevined Pennsylania woods.

It was Polansky's barn with haydust

of a hundred years in slants of sunlight.

It was sitting hens that pecked my arm

when I gathered their warm eggs.

It was Polansky's only cow that chased me

when I crossed the daisyed pasture.

It was the squirt of milk against the pail

and turning out the way I am.

It was the shortcut through the aspens

to the swamp where turtles swam.

It was tadpoles squirming in my hands

when I dipped them deep in duckweed.

It was sunstruck heat-thick days

and turning out the way I am. 

It was escape from the small, tense house

to hear the quiet country notes

to vibrate to that distant pitch

and turning out the way I am,

turning out to greet you on this land.

—triggered by a pair of lines from John Ashbury's puzzling "The Chateau Hardware"

Ascetic

Laurel Hill Creek

Mountain wanderer

Lost in the hemlock forest

Finds her pantheon