Asking for the Dark

In the early evening

The dark comes in like a heavy tide...

Ask for a poem

if you love the night

and the thought of the ringing void

my darling.

–first stanza from Thomas McGrath's "Reading by Mechanic Light"

Exclusion

From midnight on –

Trying to pick the stony lock of sleep...

We cannot see them

But even behind clouds

The moon has friends.

–adapted from lines by Thomas McGrath

All Men and All Women are Different

Birds called through the dripping woods

young green.

I tended to my wounds the real

and the imagined.

Perhaps I slept. When I awoke

the sky had changed.

Questions circled in my head

like planets.

I found the rain complex and the dark

a comfort.

Undertow

photo by Kelsey O'Brien

Water hammock, web of tides

hung between the walnut and the pear

rocking in the swells of evening,

swung to sleep in the lap of the sea.

Occupied

So much left unsaid

traveling as we all are

inside ourselves

unrecognizable.

Reminder

Robin that flew from the wild rose

to stand in the ash tut-tutting

lifted my hope for the day

to find the force of this world

packaged in sky and light.

How small my work.

Untouchable

You've made your name now

spoken with the made names

among the millions heaped

at the edge and slipping

but something's been lost

in this name you don't recognize

as the flesh begins to loosen

and the mind burns brighter

fashion be damned 

deeper and deeper now

in your tattered clothes

cast off by soldiers and you

spaced enough to work again

freed by the embracing enigmas

–weak tribute to an artist

Balm

Loosed into summer

on our backs under the oak

watching it's leaves open

catching light

time's rope unraveling

stunned by consciousness

almost happy.

.

Observations at Sunset

I felt like a cloud in no wind

and looked down at sunset

into the valley that is my life

and into the dark ahead of me

and i knew i was older

the same but older

it seemed to have happened

while I was somewhere else

and I saw how the others

were growing old around me

and i just wanted to say

that I loved the world.

–under the sway of W.S. Merwin

Where the Past Lies

I know of several barns

where i thought

the past might lie.

– E. B. White

–Marking 60  years of  'Charlotte's Web."