Heaven and Earth

Unenhanced.

Did you climb again the hill behind the barn

with mortality on your mind ?

Did you see it, the long braids of cloud and light

connecting Laurel Ridge to the canopy of heaven ?

Did you hear it, the tympani of thunder

passing to the north where the dark gathers ?

Did you feel it, your child again upon your shoulders

and the whole of Earth beneath your feet ?

And did you learn once more what beauty is for ?

Prose Poem

1975,  photo by her father

The fentanyl patch was stuck to her collarbone, just under the chickenpox scar that so mortified her at 14, and now pierced my heart. Unable to speak, she was still able to smile. "She doesn't know who you are," the neurosurgeon had said. "That's just who she is." But she wasn't smiling now as she stared at the wall, wide-eyed, transfixed. What she saw, I fear to know.

I hated our parting. I wanted to follow. Just as she'd shown me London and Paris and New York, so she could show me the invisible world. I wonder, sometimes, if she's still waiting to show me. How can I know? Maybe she wants me to stay. Sometimes it feels like she does.

So I start up the mower, plug up my ears, and 'round and 'round the farmhouse I go, circling her childhood. Her presence is strong in this field-tamed-into-yard where she ran through the grass clutching daisies under the old pear tree where the tire on a rope swings free. I shut down the mower to make a few notes. The trick is to stay ahead of your ghosts, and write it, write it, write it.

You can't sum it up. A life. Summer moves on. Fruit falls to the ground. People you love live and die. You can't sum it up. Love ends. But what if it doesn't?

—last stanza with lines from Ada Limón's The Hurting Kind

Giant Eagle Epiphany

Once a week to town for groceries,

the mini-mall strange enough

that I am stopped on the pavement by the sky,

pearlescent cirrus, escadrilles of cumuli,

blue plastic bags luffing in my cart

in the midst of the ruins,

fossil-fueled chariots idle in their slots

before tar-roofed oases of provision,

all of it, including me, out of harmony

with the lines of the horizon

and the orbits of the planets.

I must change my ways.

The Forest Within

Hemlock Trail, Laurel Hill State Park

 

A few high acres

of virgin hemlock

a towering silence

with you in it

as you once were

keeping to the path

I can be still

and go there

when I need to

my forest within

my preservation

my secret wilderness

Ark

 

We had no chance

even the pronoun

sounds impossible

in this rain

Too much against us

great distances

of space and time

society our cataract

You said we could live

in a trailer by the river

you meant it

and it breaks my heart

Winter comes early

the way I live now

flood to flood

and the dove never comes back.

Ambition

 

Holly, b. Christmas Eve, 2012 - d. Father's Day, 2022

All I want

is to make art

better tomorrow than today,

and a dog.

I would read to the dog

a poem you called

a choppy voyage in a small boat,

and she'd wag.

Everyday Radicals

It doesn't have to be anything revolutionary.

A damp bandana on a tarnished doorknob will do.

A stick leaning in leaf-filtered sunlight will do.

Keep it simple. Use plain words. Just pay attention,

be still enough for another voice

to speak through an open doorway.

Thunder tumbles in the north, harmless and reassuring.

Alone in the tree shade, no breaking news,

no agents of greed, no straining for original thought,

just the evening breeze in the swaying crowns,

just yourself, your foolish self,

old enough to miss youth's passionate errors,

young enough to feel the earth turn.

We are not less than marvelous,

each of us on our spinning world,

unique in the universe, for all we know.

And in that we are all revolutionaries.

—after Mary Oliver's "Prayer"

Denial: As if We Were Whitman

Photographing the sun through the smoke of the Bobcat Fire

in San Dimas, California, Sept. 9, 2020. (AP photo/Jae C. Hong)

Let's pretend the sun is splendid,

As if we were good and gray,

Wandering farmland in Manhattan,

As if the chickadees hadn't vanished,

And the dog hadn't died of Lyme

With her muzzle in the spring,

As if the roads weren't bubbling tar,

Or even paved. Let's pretend

We're still lovers, singing ourselves.

Up the AC.  Off the TV.

Ambien sleepers.

The Strange Idea of Continuous Living

What's the word for someone

who stares long into the morning,

the same sky, white, like a flag of surrender

pulled taut,

and there, that's me

next to the path,

he who tears a hole in the earth

and cannot stop grieving?

Plan B was just to live my life

silent and breathing,

empty, clean of secrets,

trying to figure out what bird

was calling to me and why,

before all I knew took flight,

and I remembered

you were dead all over again.

Funny thing about grief, its hold

is so bright and determined like a flame,

like something almost worth living for.

—Cento composed entirely of lines from Ada Lemón's

collection "The Carrying," Milkweed Editions, 2021

Dark Sky Sonnet

Pyrenees Mountains, Jean Francois Graffand

Veils of rain swelled the streams

to blurring, a cold front swept away

the clouds, and there rose the Milky Way,

Forked River of Heaven

lifting over the draining earth

like the handle of a basket.

Away from artificial light

night cast its spell, dark enough

that fireflies lit the beaded grass,

dark enough to count the sisters of the Pleiades,

dark enough to see the end and welcome it,

dark enough that you were beside me again,

breath-to-breath in candlelight.

Green eyes. Green eyes.

—ultimate line from a poem by Donald Hall.