Before Sunrise at Year's End

Unable to sleep

I step outside

in the grounded dark,

the sky and me

in our tragic robes.

Nothing moves

except the clouds,

no sound except

the dripping from the roof.

My premonition

that something fine awaits me

just further up the road,

where did it go?

And can this quiet teach me

what I need to know?

 

—with a premonition from Charles Simic

Old Barns

 

The old Lephart barn,

By rains and by winds

Beaten beautiful

Over three lifetimes,

Lovely in abandonment.

We hope for as much

From one.

Walking Laurel Ridge

Walking Laurel Ridge

already late enough so soon

the twilight cold and quiet

the path to the cabin

strewn with branches and briars

as deeper you stride

into this delicate balance

leaving behind what you must

the voices receding

as you wait for weak stars

little by little

to burn through thin clouds.

—after Mary Oliver's The Journey

A Further Shore

In halcyon days.

 "Believe that a further shore

is reachable from here"

—Seamus Heaney

* * *

In the dead of winter I dream

of the deserted off-season beach

in the palmy decades before the pandemic

when we felt immortal and believed

in a love that allowed us

our separate solitudes,

when we believed in a future

that was endless, and ours,

when we believed

in miracles.

Common Epiphany

At the cabin.

Scribbling by candlelight late in life,

hoping for one true line

as night, blue and deep,

floods the empty woods

and the trees gather 'round—

Awaiting a sign

that loss is not the great lesson at last,

when the dog appears on the porch boards,

happy to see me,

fogging the storm door glass—

I follow her home.

This Time in Madison

 

The police are working

to establish a motive.

Shadows lengthen in the field.

Darkness comes early these days,

making it harder to recognize faces.

I wish I had known your name sooner.

—after the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School, 12/15/24, with a line by Charles Simic.

Conjurers

From the public domain

In a world where the ochre moon,

before it hid behind the barn,

entered the kitchen through the window

and lay quivering in Roxy's water bowl,

Why why in such a world

would you find our joy unlikely

and difficult to conjure?

Era

          

Looking back on the house

In the twilight of the year

I see the children still.

So long as I stay

It never ended.

December Thaw

After rain

dissolved the snow

the moon rose through bare trees

but the first and final poem

was the sun.

No One Else

It was evening.

He kept quiet.

The moon rose so bright

He could see the path

Under the trees.

The Bluriness of the Pleiades

 

So much love seemed a bad omen.

We were quiet in the mountains,

each feeling we'd betrayed the other

from the start. We understood

we were hurtling into space

at eighteen miles a second, clouds

of atoms charged and polarized,

each alone in the abyss,

sad for each other, wanting

nothing more than twilight.

You wore your summer dress.

We signed our names with all our strength

and went home in two directions.

No way to mourn except

hold on for one more breath.

For a long time I sat in darkness.

Moonlight touched your chair.

          —A cento composed of lines from D. Nurkse's A Country of Strangers: New and Selected Poems, Knopf, 2022.

Second Sleep

The plow's been past

I heard it in the dark before first light

then I went back to sleep

being free of obligations and appointments,

being old enough, up late enough, alone enough

to slip back into a dream

and hope it's not the one

of deadline missed, or public shame, or breathless flight.

So I got up and fixed the fire

then back to the warmth of my own existence

opening the gate

for the dream of caring.

Sleeping late shortens the day

I know but I don't mind.

Sometimes when night falls

it contains you.

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 long 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