Navigators

So many closed hearts.

To tell you the truth,

I understand no one.

Above the clouds all afternoon,

 Geese called in wedges.

Death is immense.

Indigenes

Gazing east through noon,

Copse of ash a grid

Upon the pouring sky,

Sky a flux upon the ground.

Running through our fingers,

Menthol in our lungs,

Sky becomes the brilliance in our blood.

Walking with Milosz

Beside the stubborn oaks

I wade the tree line with Milosz,

Seeds on our sleeves, gossamer across our faces,

Removed from the fairground of the world,

Away from the shouts and drumbeats.

What a relief. To be alone with my meditations

Beside the stubborn oaks.

—with lines by Ceslaw Milosz

Ballast

"Wildly expected, if you will,

cataclysm."

Things i'd say, am saying,

to persons no longer present.

Yards away the dun pines

shake down their needles.

"Oh, please, yes," to all of it.

If you watch me from

increasing  distance,

i am writing this always.

—Manipulated poem by Rae Armantrout with original stanzas.

Ten-Acre Cosmos

Dark may be the universe, all that we see

Only a froth on an ocean of invisible stuff.

But in our field we watch the galaxies of green

 Curling in their dessication, hardening to browns,

Their countless seeds carried on the wind

And passing poets, like astronomers,

Standing on the brink of great discoveries.

—with the words of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson italicized.

Save Yourself

Breath deeply against

The glare of final things.

They burn in your chest.

November Tanka

Please click to enlarge.

Ladder leans against the barn

in the cooling afternoon.


Snow will light the night.


Wheeling crystal oracles

pass the darkened moon.

The Longer the Less

Turkey-tail. Click for a closer look.

A stranger, more complicated world

Opens itself to us as we age.

Oh, it's been there all along, of course.

Distracted by thrilling and vivid,

We just never noticed when we were

Young enough to think we had things pegged.