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

Fatalist

Apples soon will drop

Into their own dark shadows.

So do we ripen.