Cycle

rain

and the sweet smell

of decay

daybreak

and the certainty

of the next season

nightfall

and the stark facts

of solitude

Love in The Fall

  

fruit of the oak

capless in yellow dust


reach for the hips

of the runaway rose


taste your own blood

posted at the borders


if is a real condition.

—with a line by A.E. Stallings

These Days

milkweed bugs

   

the sun appears

in thicker mist

and takes a lower arc

above the wooded hill

these days

i seldom drive

to town and walk

in dew the world

is slowing down

i take a lower arc

blessed enough

to live at peace

beyond the news

these days

Color

Muted this year,

the drought being blamed,

but here's the road home

where vivid's often too much.

Leaving the Details to the Dark

Cropping a photograph from the previous evening, a line or two present themselves, words about unfinished projects, what it is in my makeup that drives me to completion, and a newfound willingness to leave them undone. Neither am i as driven to analyze, to understand, nor to try an make sense of the whirl that surrounds me as i was even a decade ago. Reality, i have come to accept, is beyond my comprehension.This feels like maturity, but it may be exhaustion.

The sun has yet to clear the hill, the weakening dark still lies upon the field, and i walk through it toward the woods. Spindles of light are gathering on the rise among the trunks, the day stretching its fingers among the trees, sometimes touching the ground with its carpet of wet leaves. My boots are soaked by the condensations of night.

Morning climbs down the trunks. A crow clears its throat. Rising in the near distance where the paved road runs unseen is the clamor of human society, the too-near distance. I follow the path i have made for myself through the cold and dewy woods, spider lines across my face, a little disoriented, going with it.

Enough Heaven

Meant to be expanded with a click

The pouring wind flattens the field,

asters and goldenrod laid westward,

Another train whistles near the crossing

in the valley behind the wooded hills,

Four crows flying in formation

 against the sky that spells rain.

If it clears i will try

to photograph the moon,

And if it doesn't,

the ground is celestial enough.

Worth a click

—with a line by Matthew Sweeney

A Ride in the Mountains

  

We, too, are turning,

Golden in descent,

Blazing at the edges.

The Runner

Still i run

though i am slow

so slow it is the first of October

two thousand and fifteen

and still this road i run

for more than half my longish life

with many stops along the way

and always off i go again

for when i run this gravel road

i am not a boy imperiled by love

in this hour i am free.

Yet see the ground

forever formed

by what it used to be.

—with a line by Andrew Saviano