Flow

Afield in twilight,

Wanting less and less,

Only to end in peace.

Carefully

Himself tender as he goes,

The day is soft, the sky gray silk,

And the woods are full of infants.

Brief Travelers

We make our meek adjustments

Content with such random consolations

As the rain and wind deposit,

A glaze of ancient perspective

The close-at-hand provides —

A seeing shared in silence

With one along for the ride.

—with lines by Hart Crane

Passing Over

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Last Sunday in April, a motorless local,

No farming on Sunday, too early for church,

Bluets are giants of silence,

As tall as white turbines

Guarding the ridge without wind,

So bright the quiet,

I hear a hawk's wingtips

Carving the air as she passes

Over the trees black as memory,

Still leafless and reaching.

Fog in Moonlight

A ring of shades

danced in the field.

I threw among them

a name seldom spoken.

Everything spread into nothing

and left me alone

with only the mist of a song.

—after Mandlestam

Returnest

Closer to the earth

On Earth Day,

And on the next day

Closer still,

The nights so far away.

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A Life in One Place

The pasture grew up

with sarvis and cherry

once the horses were gone.

New Light

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New yard light at the neighbor's on the hill,

Hi-tech LED, low wattage, more focused,

Which is to say more down, and now

They are happy in their dusk-lit yard,

And I am happy in my deeper dark,

From horizon to horizon i have stars,

Half a universe to light the path.

—with a phrase from a Jim Harrison/Ted Kooser collaboration.

Upper Turkeyfoot News

Come evening, wild turkeys strolled

out of the woods into the pasture,

flipping cow pies, looking for bugs.

Liquid Dark

Down here i listen to the night,

Stars reflecting on the pond,

The past within my reach,

And there is Mars, the red on black,

Water purling down the pipe,

I hear her laugh, a girl

From forty years ago.

Down here i listen to the night.