Mountain Stream

Iser's Run

Doves consoled me to the road

Which led me to the stream of grief

And everywhere sad hope

For spring was everywhere

Praising the way it happened

Praising the way it could be

Praising the myth of forgiveness

The passionate transitory

A dangerous season

As if there were a choice.

Flat on the Ground

Balanced on a spinning planet

In a swirl of spheres and systems

I spread a blanket on the ground

To lie flat on my place on Earth

Fingers in decay and starshine

Riding through perpetual night

Or lose my grip in solitude

And fall off the edge of Eden.

Sheltered in an Old Barn

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Pushed by gusts booming on the wooded hill,

lifting the plane of the pond, unsettling the grass

and me, a mistral wind stirred the primal

instincts that guided me to shelter in an old barn

on an old farm planted now by the next

farmer still farming in this every-other country,

and i entered the peace of the past with the motes

and spirits afloat in shafts of light, the souls

of men and animals i want to imagine still

there in the hair stuck in the adzemarks

and in the shine of oak handles polished by men's hands

and in the smell of life still rich in the grain,

the wind pouring through the broken panes,

a galaxy of knotholes brilliant on the western wall,

and i stayed longer than i should.

Cut Flowers

Nothing interests me for long

Since sense betrayed the heart,

Not even sleep,

Distractions chirping through the night—

I live skin deep,

Plagued by verses i can't write,

By poems you can't keep,

Those squandered visions put to song,

Line endings at their start,

Not once forever wrong.

Theology

  

Another world

Bursting to get out,

And us

With our round heads

Thrust through the mullion,

Breathing and curious

About what once was,

Wielding our fictions

Against what will be,

Dying to know.

Carbon Days

Grounded in the woods you call your own

With one who knows but will not say,

Away from the pretenders and their secrets

No one will let you down today,

Rich with the peace of expecting nothing

You have your chair at the top of the hill,

You have your dog and last year's leaves,

The sunset and the dioramic constellations,


You have until the extractors come,

And you vow to make the most of waiting.

And Now

Awake before the spikes of the sun

Bristle in the trees, i am blinded by morning.


At the kitchen sink with water boiling

I hear the tremolo of doves through glass,


And i am filled with the enthusiasms

Of a man determined to live simply.


Outside, the cloud-slung twittery

Shakes loose the snow from branches,


I should ask What are the chances?

See the glitter over the stable as it falls,


And now the sun's above the empty stalls,

And now I should not drive to town.

Blue

Moon-blue again

when the sky opened

over the imprinted bank

where deer climbed

wide-eyed in indigo,

cautious and quiet,

as i hope to remain.

Spring Primaries

The phoebe is weaving her nest on the porch,

Rolled snow fence lies stacked at the margins,

The cost of our fears leaves me in the lurch,

But the worms in the grass are a bargain.

The Well

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Twice-boiled weather, the water from the well,

hand-dug, shallow, lined with stone

picked for a thickness from the oxen-plowed fields,

the yard sunken where the rock spring runs

hidden under grasses glittering in fairy rings —

 a ride through the neighboring farms in late winter,

red barns and white chuches still

plumb on their timbers and sided with sundown,

becomes sudden joy — the turn of the road,

the tossing hills, the swept sky,

the air cooling in the hollows, and the whole thing

opening to something immense on this earth

where we find our happiness, or not at all,

fresh water cold in the ground of our living.

—penultimate line from Wordsworth.