Old Friends in Late Summer

                                  Speak to me of change

                                   and I will listen,

                                   both of us

                                   steadying ourselves.

                                   No one else is coming.

The Volatility of Consciousness

jo'b   

Grass mowed,

I fell asleep

in a chair by the well

and awoke with the sky in my eyes,

realizing as if for the first time

I'd never see her again—

one moment we were discussing

Yeats and elderberries, and the next

I was alone on a dirt road

in a nest of modified illusions,

facing the savage god of the future—

but it was only the FedEx driver

pounding down the road,

raising yellow dust.

Too Much to Think About

jo'b   

It is needful

to have night

in one's body.

It is hurtful

to be right.

—Robinson Jeffers was right.

Reading Robert Lowell at Night

jo'b   

               Nights are troubled times—

               faint visitors unbidden,

               wraiths, the should-have-beens,

               await to meet me in my dreams.

               I am too much alone,

               too unforgiving of myself—

               soft music fills the void,

               and reading sometimes helps—

               Sometimes my mind's not right,

               as Robert Lowell confessed,

               but still I would not say

               that I myself am hell—

               Quickly yet how in the dark

               I'm back in my childhood bed,

               pillow wrapped around my head

               to keep the shouting out,

               the insults and the breaking glass,

               the one-man show at 3 a.m.

               In the great relief of sunrise,

               soundly in first light I sleep—

               late to bed, and late to rise

               keeps this man healthy—

               if not wealthy. if not wise.

Ever the Wind

jo'b    

The stumbled path you took

the tides and reversals

that left no footprints

the piers you built into deep water

wrecked by storms

blue time undoing everything

You thought... what is hope anyway

gulls crying in sunlight

the glittering swells of the sea

the thud and crash

of surf and vision

a walk on an empty beach?

In the Glistening

jo'b   

             In the glistening autumnal side of summer

             I am expecting better hours.

             I smell the cornfield.

             I hear the pear drop.

             I see bats in the dusk

             flying at the edge of the woods.

             The moon is my only companion.

             The cricket, the gurgling spring,

             the wind rising in the trees,

             all speak to me

             of the steady progress

             of the universe,

             and I am rewarded

             for mere expectation.

—Drawn from The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau over four Augusts, 1851-54.

Here Come the Cows

                                                                                                     jo'b

Here come the cows,

swinging their heavy heads

in disapproval, as curious

about us as we are about them,

about the one that comes to the wire

with her wet nostrils and her flies.

If she knew what a man thinks

she'd run for her life,

and so would we.

Perseids

Acadia National Park, Maine   (Jack Fusco photo)

               Fellow creature

               of no consequence,

               what we said as we rode

               through the tail of the comet,

               among the billions of billions,

               what we said to each other

               meant everything

               for an instant.

Fisherman

                                                                                jo'b     

            In the sea was a bass,

            and I was on the shore

            with my heart in my chest,

            the clouds above me, and she

            was in New York forever,

             and I, casting and reeling.

                                                                   —inspired by a Jim Harrison poem

                                        

Even So

                                                               jo'b   

                         I have traveled far

                         in my own country,

                         this yard,

                         this overgrown field,

                         these woods behind and deep,

                         full of shadows,

                         where I can cry out,

                         and no one will hear,

                         under this smothering sky.

                         Maranatha.

Mystics

                                                  Click to enlarge                                   jo'b

             

               Stopped on a hilltop

               by the wonders of evening,

               I'm thinking of you, too,

               though we would never say so.

               It could be true if we were bolder—

               All the way to heaven is heaven.

                                             —with words by Catherine of Siena, 14th C. Catholic mystic

Descendants

                                                                                                                                   jo'b  

They have left again for Michigan,

and the yard returns to emptiness,

a ringing vacancy

in the gilded air of sunset,

anticipation replaced by longing

among abandoned chairs

still set up in the grass.

Above the woods in silhouette,

young blackbirds gather and rise,

flocking and strengthening

for their necessary migration

over ripened fields.

On the Cabin Porch Among Trees

As August begins                               jo'b   

                    The wind overhead

                    moves through the circling crowns,

                    leaf shadows drift on the great trunks

                    that are shifting their weight from foot to foot,

                    everything moving as far as we can see,

                    shifting in a wind that brings rain.

                    We, too, are shifting, you and me,

                    drifting on our inner tides

                    of wonder and change.

                    The universe in constant motion

                    renders stillness holy,

                    above us, the sound of the sea,

                    the rush of existence, the earth sound.

                    Let's just sit here in silence for awhile.