Canticle

 

Our lives

are as real

as yours

Sang the hylas

in the pond

As in the west

the day cooled

to ashes

—after Charles Simic's My Life is as Real as Yours

Woodsmoke

Sugar maples blooming in a reluctant spring

A curl of smoke

over the house

on the last cold night

of a hesitant spring,

an offering of sorts

in starlight,

the simplest things

iridescent with meaning

given exile enough.

Caught in the Rip at Eighty

Swan Beach, NC

No use

To fight

The current.

Try not

To panic

As lovers

Grow small

And faint.

Sense of Place

Heirloom European pear

All night

the idling engine of the wind

pushes against the house,

the seasons changing.

I wish I could hear more

in the dark,

my grandfather's cough,

my daughter's sigh,

the chatter of juncos

flying north.

Come morning,

wide shadows of the clouds

sweep across the field.

I open the windows,

put in the screens.

But nothing is finished.

Listen, it's modern times everywhere,

officials criss-crossing the sky,

hostages to power and wealth.

I'm glad I'm not important

and can walk around in the yard,

maybe sit with the dog

under the old pear tree,

hollow, but ready to bloom.

Maybe, come evening

we'll set up a chair

down by the road

and watch the deer

stepping out of the woods,

cautious and quiet in the hollow,

hungry and peaceful 

in the shadow of the earth.

—after Lorenzo Thomas' Displacement

Without Condition

So deep

Into the dimensions of April

They are never coming back,

Those few

Who loved you most.

Snow on the violets.

Inland Gale

The anodized air

the torment of the hemlocks

the torrent of the horizontal rain

breaking like surf off the corrugated roof

beating the ground to stones at the drip line

only the dirt road bending away

gleams as if nothing's the matter

the more I reflect on things

the more I am sure of nothing

The Sun Itself

click to enlarge

My shadow long

among the longer shadows

of the maples and the oaks,

we know each other well,

good company for fifty years

on this mountain slope,

the great budding crowns

softly breathing,

sunlight lifting from the valley.

You should be here.

The sun itself,

low among the trunks,

an urchin of refraction,

its fiery spines

radiating through the mist,

silent and descending.

On such an evening 

I dare to imagine

two minds, one sun,

nuclear fusion.

You should be here.

Apothegm

After April rain

Take it from one

Who does not

Whatever else

You have lost

If you have each other

You have it all.

The Same

\

We've known for a long time

in something close to silence

in something close to wisdom

Aloft

something we've learned not to say

guardians of solitude

protectors of each other

in the charm of magnetic fields

respectful in our ways.

The mind holds many truths

we've learned not to name

in something close to wisdom

in something close to silence

in something close to tragedy

we feel the same.

—photo edited from the public domain