New Beginnings

Abandoned wagon road

Centered by fog

impassive and serene

letting go of attachment

mysterious water says

simplify simplify

this time I listen.

The Way Back

Swan Beach daybreak. Click to see wild horses.

Every sunrise, sometimes strangers' eyes.

Not necessarily dolphins, even gulls,

even pelicans in a line above the swells,

the heron staring in the drainage ditch,

every road which led me back.

Every red light on the detour,

every carol buzzing in the dash,

even some by Brenda Lee,

every burlapped tree roof-racked.

I sense the sense of two.


The place where the spring runs out of the hill,

when will i see you there again?

Stacks of books, every page, every song,

even when there isn't one.

Did you see the meteor shower?

Every thistle, shell, and cloud,

every sneeze and breaking wave.

Every mile, each roadside stand,

every apple, pear, and plum,

I come undone, undone.

—adaption of a poem by Dean Young, with lines by DY in italics.

Going

Pane of sea

slipping off the bar

Band of day

sinking in the sky

North before the solstice

everything I think of is not here.

Searchers

Earphones blocking the sound of the surf

he swings his dish in the dusk at the tide line

waiting for the music of metal sweet to his want

for the thrill of the dig the pocketed coin

hunting hoping so much has been lost

seven billion searchers on the earth

you'd think we'd find each other

sooner or at all.

After a Storm on the Banks

The disabling tide has receded at last

days of gruel with water at merciful end

left in its wake beautiful decays of barnacles

foaming rainbows shivering in a dropping wind

and a prideful self-sufficient man happy again

to be roughing it alone past where the road ends

with a replenished supply of almond milk

a fresh bouquet of organic kale

and a systemic ache he blames on a virus

that no amount of ginger tea or ibuprofen will alleve.

The drifting parting departing clouds

where have they gone?

Swan Beach Courtesy

Over the dune and under the sea

where the road goes in the gale

nature acting natural

reminding us.

Coastal Flooding

Swan Beach, NC

All night and day the wind

whips the sea to foam

and blows the sand to smoke.

The dunes move south

grain by roaring grain.

I walk the beach alone

leaning on the gusts

not so far from home.

Not by Minutes

When our season comes

we shall live by moons

and we'll be free.

Running at Night

A little grain a little blur

a little strain to see what's there

stimulate the engine of the mind

better than the crisp the well-defined.


Clarity is over-rated.

Swan Beach Lament

Swan Beach, NC

You won't see many postcards with

a northeaster slinging sand in your face

but elemental desolation clears the head.

When the state road is the beach you attune

to the moon and the tides and the wind

to the surf and the storms at sea and love it

while you can for plans are being drawn

the developers have come and you wonder

how to kiss another open beach goodbye.

Barn With No Animals

Broken glass on trampled earth

hammered iron rusting under rotting burlap

leather reins still wrapped around the harrow handle

the ghosts of animals in their empty stalls

their honest scents still rich in the beams and timbers

and not much else

all that's left after so much work to make a life

eight successive generations

no one pretending they were something else

they were farmers and they farmed

so little outlasts flesh and bone

here the barn and here the fields

and here the house with wind in its attic

its mud room fallen into the cellar hole

its roof leaking and standing not much longer,

it seems a holy place in need of preservation

a way of life most have forgotten

look back far enough and find

all of us were farmers once.

The Wind Does Its Work

The wind does its work

Over the field wet with melted snow.

Change follows change follows change,

Living as we do in acceleration 

The years grow shorter, yet

We can make the days grow longer.

Why not let things carry our hearts away?

Are we not at the beginning of a golden age?

The events of the broad world may be beyond us

But we can turn this morning into forever.