Early Evening

February in December

Virga trailing eastbound clouds

Cornfields empty blue with snow

Quiet farms idle tractors

Silos half full opalescent

Red barns steaming breath

Valley of the sleeping trees

Sleeping people sleeping ground.

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What We Miss

Unnoticed before snow,

 filled now with dendrites

and capped with vapor

from the great lake

made marvelous by cold,

the nests and warrens,

the dark, close places

of safety and comfort.


The storm reveals

what we've missed,

unchallenged.

Auge in the Ham

Having driven in one day from sandcastles to snowmen, a little "Ancient Music" from Ezra Pound (with slight alteration) seems temporarily appropriate:




Winter is icummen in.

Lhude sing Goddamm.

Snoweth drop and staineth slop,

And how the wind doth ramm!

Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,

An ague hath my ham.

Freezeth river,  turneth liver,

Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Golden Egg

ancient forms of natural beauty

gnash of wind and water

mutable theaters of light

airsong seasong birdsong


overbuilt piledriven plotplanned

maritime forest uprooted

cashed in all of it waiting

for the next named storm


an ancient form

of restoration

thirty dash

Wanchese

No inevitable postcard this

this is an honest place

a place where work is done

work done and a living made

a living made of capture

capture and rust and struggle

struggle against the inevitable.

...and Time

Our best days are spent

beside the broad water

busy with our tasks

of little consequence

walking the tideline

for relics and amulets

casting over breakers

without expectation

content to be still

our senses engaged

we have world enough...

The Great and the Small

Some facts of this existence are difficult to grasp.

Perhaps it is because I have been living for a few days on a long sand bar,  seeking regeneration, an outcast by choice, and lack physical contact with the mainland.

Take today, for example. Today I learned there are probably three times as many stars in the universe than anyone knew.

I study a picture of galaxies from the Hubble telescope. Surely, in all of that, there exists something else like me and you, an intelligence, just as awed, stunned by wonder.

But in the ceaseless crashing of water and the whipping wind,  I can't hold it in my mind.

Better to focus on the close at hand. Today at a year-round Christmas shop, I discovered there exists such a thing as a Betty Boop Christmas tree.

Since the sublime is too much, I consider the ridiculous. It leaves me no less puzzled.

Pristine

Give us a scene unconstructed

The long view free of frames

A horizon long enough

We can see the curve of the earth

Feel the weight of our sphere

And thrill at the speed of our flight.