Your form in fall mist
fills me with longing, then sun
burns us both away.

How the kitten waits
enraptured by stir of mouse,
pounce, miss - no matter!

The crack of May dawn
worry takes me for a walk -
how fragrant the spring

There’s snow on my cheek,
but I can not ski down it,
since I’m the mountain

A small orangeish fish
takes me for its shark, so swims
just below my chest

Old barn – blue sky slats
mixed in among the gray. as
sky mixes with mine

I’d begin again
if I could find alphabet
whose hair was not white

Today’s dawning is
unlike yesterday’s, unlike
as peas in a pod

Just one white whisker
caught in sun says sleeping cat
is not a gray rock

Toothless

A kind of waking,
old age slays the dreams of youth,
leaves dragons toothless

Stick

My father’s a stick,
shedding flesh while yet he walks
and talks - his own ghost

One Tooth

Father, you look old
beyond old, just one tooth left,
mind bright as a bird

New Pains

My old father’s got
new pains, springtime of shadows
that herald death’s bloom

Pain

My father visits
himself less and less as pain
becomes mind’s master

Father’s Death, October 17, 2002

Listen to water
running over rock, singing
what it has to sing

This Rock

This rock doesn’t know
you’re gone and I have no way
to say what’s happened

Naked

I was naked when
I heard the news of your death,
became more naked

Shroud Of Earth

In his shroud of earth,
old father’s an enigma
before words, after

The Last Time We Spoke

The last time we spoke,
you were still you, your staunch self,
most familiar ghost

In Your Beret

You, in your beret,
in fall woods with your lit pipe,
now, no longer you

Magician

Death’s a magician
who has wrapped you in his cloak,
leaving bereft bones

G

Mourning changes g -
the heft of my heart, how close
I am to the fall

Your Eye

Your eye was steadfast
and despairing all at once
as if hope could kill

You Lost Everything

You lost everything
over again with each breath -
possessed, dispossessed

Father

Father, you’re buried
in the middle of nowhere,
where the pine box rots

History

You were history
whom I chased through continents
of grace and carnage

Basket

A man’s a basket
for ghosts who work on him just
as they did in life

Wealth

My ghosts are my wealth,
tutelary spirits, wise
and beyond wisdom

Ghost Society

Ghost society
debates fine points in my breast,
sweetly solves nothing

My You

Love both counterfeits
and invents - I never knew
any but my you

Off-White Pine Box

That off-white pine box
was ostentatiously plain,
just as you once were

Old Pipe

I have an old pipe
of yours that hasn’t felt fire
in twenty-five years

Still

Each day I wake up
and I ask, “Are you still dead?”
and you don’t answer

Gust

A gust of wind comes
like the police to break up
a meeting of leaves

Smell Of You

Smell of you, some days,
is on me, as if within
I cooked your kettle

December Dawn

It’s another month
since you died - sunlight perches
high in bare-boned oak

Holding Hands

A man and a boy
make a riddle of future
and past holding hands

Bridge Too Far

From the Vistula
to the Cuyahoga, you
were a bridge too far

I Would Have

I would have remade
the life you lived before you
made me, foolish child

That Smile

Just where did you find
that smile, dropped from a rainbow
promising too much?

Maimed

More severely now,
in death, I know you, father,
maimed by history

Just Habit

Why does this light still
sculpt your shadow when you’re gone -
is it just habit?

You Without You

Your shadow is you
without you and I’ve glimpsed it
in my bedroom, too

Dreaming New

I’m dreaming of you,
night after night, in scenes I
don’t know from the past

Ninety

Ninety, you granted
the corpses you saw at four
were gruesome, held you

Slipped Out

When suffering came
you just slipped out the window,
left your house to it

You, Three

You were barely three -
starvation taught you this trick
good, too, at life’s end

One Hour

You were yourself in
irony one hour before
you died - we spoke, laughed

Shy Cloud Eyes

You were bitterness
in the belly, shy cloud eyes
in a wind worked face

Your Mother

Right to the end, you
held fast to your mother, so
still within your pain

Luck

You were so lucky
the one who bore you helped you
walk earth’s way to death

Rachel

Blonde and blue eyed, she
was white-haired when you left her,
rainbow as you went

Foundations

Foundations, they were
what worried you, held you rapt
looking for the cracks

Vain

You were vain, next best
thing to forgetting, making
yourself your whole world

Clotting Out Loud

A vanity all
the devastated know, like
blood clotting out loud

Tropics’ Kindness

You learned your last years
to love tropics’ kindness, where
all things rot faster

Your Grave

I promised myself
I’d never visit your grave
because you’re not there

Motherland’s Son

Your motherland’s son,
you used vodka to numb the pain
to the very end

Rich, Rumbling Speech

So many Sundays
I spoke with you, just now, heard
your rich, rumbling speech

Phantom Pain

Loss of those you loved
amputated hope, whose stump
filled with phantom pains

How You Told Of Elvira Violini

Just the slightest pause
in a tale of long ago -
passion’s signature

After The Solstice

After the solstice,
mourning dawns bright, clear and blue -
I’m looking for you

Mountain

You are a mountain,
I’m a little boy again -
your hand hangs from sky

Sellers Of Old Maps

We walked by the Seine,
past the sellers of old maps,
as I made my world

Through Your Eyes

I’ve seen through your eyes
worlds I couldn’t imagine -
Cossacks whose laughs kill

Haunting

Who knows whom you loved
and lost, so spring mornings were
haunted by song, scents?

No Artist

You were no artist-
no images escaped you
or helped you escape

Walls Of Snow

Between walls of snow
you walked that far off winter,
and kept it in you

You Slept So Little

You slept so little
and worried so much, not just
about the future

Forty Years

I had a long dream
of you, forty years younger,
looking like yourself

I’d Forget

if you came back, I’d
not ask a single question -
I’d forget them all

Babel’s Bones

You spoke to yourself
French, Polish, Russian, Hebrew -
you knew Babel’s bones

Fishhooks

Lying all about
you left questions that caught me,
fishhooks in rainbows

What You Gave

What you gave was far
too precious for mere giving -
I’ve no name for it

Directly To The Soul

The body’s language
speaks directly to the soul -
yours told me so much

Secret Seed

So many furrows
your brow had, like a ploughed field
that held secret seed

Last Day Of Your Last Year

This is the last day
of the last year that you lived -
sad to let it go

When I Was Seven

The sound of your cough
was the thunder in my night,
as you sought, fled death

Of Nowhere

You began to dream
of nowhere and of nothing,
of dreaming’s end, too

Empty Slate Eyes

You listened to us
from courtesy or kindness
with empty slate eyes

Young And Pretty

“When I was young
and pretty,” you’d say, with eyes
downcast, ironic

Immunology

Grafts fascinated
you when you were young - and then
you became one here

Top Of The Stove

As a little boy
you slept on top of the stove
with a snoring dog

Elephant Tusk

Your elephant tusk
sits in this room as I write -
you didn’t want it

Dark Debts

From a foolish friend
it came fifty years ago -
you’d paid his dark debts

1953

You’d return insane
with grief from cold Germany
and howl silently

Letters You’ll Never Read

I write you letters
you’ll never read, answer, but
still we correspond

Return to Russia

Sleepless in Moscow,
you sipped tea with babushkas,
said nothing had changed

Your Knees

Gentleness I’d find
in your knees when I’d stand there
looking so far up

Dented

Both bald and dented
was your head, from a hard blow
struck so long ago

Another Missing

Grieving has left me
for a time and I miss it,
just as I miss you

Third Full Moon

This, the third full moon
since you died, shines high and bright,
cold pearl, free of hurt

Parachute

Song’s the parachute
that slows down my fall into
a world without you

Black Capped Chickadee

Smaller, smaller, small
as a black-capped chickadee
you became, dying

Eight

You’re nowhere while birds
call your name in the eight tongues
you spoke with the wind

So Quietly

So quietly do
I miss you that I wonder
sometimes if I am

Mask

Your expressions, Dad,
have taken over my face -
memories unmasked

Bone Stalk

The garden we’ve made
absorbs me - my head’s a bloom
swaying on bone stalk

Gold Stitched

Firefly gold stitched nights
of summer you sat silent
puffing on your past

As If By Braille

I learned my father’s
melancholy, as if by
Braille, by touch talking

As Oriole Sings

As oriole sings,
telephone rings in my head,
“Is that you, Dad, dead?”

Gravel

Your voice’s gravel, Dad,
I miss, as I look at all
the flood scoured and moved

October 3, 2003 – Mother’s Death

Death against the odds,
an allergic reaction
in early autumn

So You’re Gone

So you’re gone, mother,
whom I never quite knew, since
you weren’t quite you

At The Graveside

“Did you know, Roger,
we’re sitting on top of Dad?”
“Yes, Tamar, I did”

First Shock

The first shock has passed,
so that I can begin to grieve
with the falling leaves

Mom And Dad

Apart together
you’ll lie in Ohio clay,
dreamless, undisturbed

Dying

Inexpressible
as the full moon setting now
is dying, the end

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrion,
tiny power plant, inscribed
with Ma’s initials

(M)Other

I always meant you
to be other than you were,
just as you did me

Here

Here in the moonlight
I’m writing in the presence
of the subtlest shades

Each Death

Each death makes me feel
more vulnerable, closer
kin of earth, air, night

Come Back

I wish I heard you
whispering in this cold rain,
trying to come back

Your Ghosts

When I was little
you walked beside me - now, still,
your ghosts hold my hands

Dead A Year (Dad)

You’re becoming clay
who in life was its close kin,
one who read it well

Fabulous Loss

Now I have lost all
the fabulous certainties
of my strange childhood

Stuck

I am always stuck
between “Hello” and “Goodbye”,
mispronouncing both

Memoriam

Sometimes I can read
my parents’ shapes in the clouds,
then wind scatters them

Foolishness

Dad, please forgive me
foolishness of a headstone
for where you are not

Wink

In my dreams, the dead
walk and talk, wink knowingly -
“You are one of us”

Flying Carpet

You’ve become figures
in the carpet of my dreams -
will you fly me home?

The amber of tea
traps all of my reflections,
then lets me drink them

Wafers of blue sky
sandwiched in between cloud sheep
that have no shepherd

Everything I write -
shorthand for a single breath
shorthand that falls short

Aftermath of love
when the dead are mists in mind
changing shape, color

Each second a bead
the old clock keeps on saying
the necklace of life

California
poppies, little cups of gold
in no rush at all

One spring instant holds
a thousand years of sweetness,
both bee and beyond

Hills climb to the sky
drop to their knees by the sea,
hold millennia

I am my death's horse -
it rides me over the hills
to canter the beach

Spring Hail

Spring hail beats leaf drums –
sunshine yellow skunk cabbage
glows up from the ground

Bloedel Gardens, Bainbridge Island, Seattle, April 19, 2008

Wind Combs

Wind combs wildflowers
on the hill’s spine by the sea –
if my hair could bloom...

Tamales Point

This spring spectacle –
millions of bright flower eyes –
every year, just now

Tule Elk

Tule elk, near color
of milk chocolate, moving
easily uphill

Twin yellow pockmarked
morel towers – how eagerly
my eyes pick them out

The tree peony
sheds huge white petals - a tent
going to pieces

Ransom

I’m lost in my words –
only my words can set me free –
I can’t play ransom

Happiness

The blue sky shimmers
amid wind blown leaves of green –
such is happiness

On Black Lake

White swans on black lake,
white dogwoods blooming on shore,
white dog by my side

lost worlds,
half remembered passions,
spring's first plum blossom.

Free You

How will I free you
from tedious city life?
Read Basho’s poems

Grapes

When the grapes are ripe,
I miss you, dead grandfather -
then the first snow comes

Marsh

By the tidal marsh
the wind whispers words of salt –
crabs hide in the ooze

Lustrous

Sky like a bottle
what grapes can match autumn’s light
in lustrous sorrow?

Whisper

Like the sweet whisper
of last year’s cherry blossoms –
this fog on the sea

Chuckle

Morning is cloudy
not yet does heaven’s black bull
chuckle with thunder

First Leaves

First leaves of autumn
drifting like boats of burnt earth
on a sea of green

1972-1973

Silver winter sun
getting ready now to set,
glorious pale bird

Today wears a hat
of varied and subtle grays,
clouded as am I

Words are swinging doors
that lead into and out of
disappearing dreams

Sunlight on my hand
that has blue rivers running
beneath the pink skin

I’m the only way
I know - I must travel it
even when I’m lost

I love how stumps rot,
each becoming cathedral
of its own demise

White Egrets

In the tidal marsh
white egrets at attention
as stiff sea breeze blows

Opened Mouth

An open mouthed fish,
white, dead in seaweed tangle
washed up on Drake’s beach

After Point Reyes

On the other coast
I left myself walking the beach
with wind for my thoughts

Just As Flimsy

I try not to put
pressure on words, let them know
I’m just as flimsy

Pepper Red

Here in mid-July
drought has brought a few leaves down,
turned them pepper red

Too Many Of Us

Monarchs – not a one,
blue fin tuna are few, too –
too many of us

River Talk

The river can’t hear,
but it talks and talks, says things
that sound new each day

Peppers

Little green rockets
poised atop their green fuel tanks –
hot chili peppers

Trilling

Trilling cicadas
ancient chorus of summer
under a deaf moon

Dead Mouse In The Path

I cover distance
so I meet such diverse fates
looking for my own

All Wrong

I’ve done it all wrong –
but what was it, anyway?
I’ve no idea

Monarch In Maine

A monarch in Maine,
first of this long hot summer,
flying speck of hope

Waves And Clouds

The waves and the clouds
get all mixed up together –
they’re only water

Notes

Take notes on nothing –
these may well prove instructive
should you meet something

Slant

Birches on a slant
half fallen after the storm –
white slashes in green

Subway Platforms

Living and the dead
mingle on subway platforms
where my mind runs trains

Never Speak

If I understood
what I meant to say, I might
never speak a word

Terns

The chattering terns
are gaiety and terror
sharing the same sky

Popham Beach

All’s apparition
on Popham Beach in the mist –
my feet, yours, the sea

Flash

Flash of kingfisher
down the spine of the dark creek
after a hard rain

Tiny

Tiny hummingbird
sixteenth of the cardinal
that passes over

Self And Sparrow

For self and sparrow
each evening’s setting sun is
renunciation

August Firefly

August firefly
virtually the last one
tiny spot of gold

Sheets Of Sunlight

Like sheets of sunlight,
yellow swallowtails flit through
green of late summer

Siam Queen

Siam Queen basil
has grown dark spires, now flowers
a subtle purple

Daisies

Orange daisies bloom
the eyes of unseen tigers –
sultry afternoon

Riches

Of the world’s riches,
I’ve tasted next to nothing
and that is plenty

Like Snares

Cicadas are mute
as a soft rain takes their place,
playing leaves like snares

Twanging

The frogs are twanging -
has a string instrument drowned
in the lush green bog?

New Minted

Lifetime’s wondering
doubles back in itself – I’m
new minted naive

Getting Older

I’m getting older
and am almost innocent
whatever the charge

Stormy Skies

Perfectly peaceful,
the snapdragons make rainbows
under stormy skies

Day Of Rain

A whole day of rain
I’m waiting to spy the first
lean praying mantis

Milton, Delaware

Scavenging the beach
for dead fish, fox spied English
professor, bookless

Rest

I can’t imagine
the rest of my life, how rest
at last will find me

Before

Before the downpour
the gray cat, storm cloud color,
sleeps at lily’s base

My Beginnings

Stranger and stranger
to me are my beginnings,
once all that I knew

Brainforest

I am wandering
restless as the wind all through
the deep brainforest

Salt Shaker

Salt shaker, can you
rain down wisdom on my head,
even if it’s bald?

Now

The strangeness of now
is how familiar it is –
I dream I know it

Afternoons

I spend afternoons
walking the groves of my mind
while shadows lengthen

Pigments

Pigments of feeling
color the autumn landscape –
am I more than haze?

No Bindings

Empty shelf fungi
long for books as leaves float down
but without bindings

In The Woods

These hours in the woods
in light, wind at water’s edge –
do I think at all?

Loose

White dog’s middle aged
and I am older than that –
we’re still on the loose

Lasso

I am a lasso
that’s thrown about emptiness,
which yet slips away

First Day of Summer, 2008

The season has changed
but I remain just the same,
riddled by inklings

Geography

Now’s geography
I am always exploring,
yet can make no map

A Long Time

To live a long time,
to outlive so many selves,
to have been a crowd

Instant

A black cat slinks by –
not our own resurrected –
but for an instant...

Prophecy

Not so long ago
yesterday was tomorrow –
this is prophecy

Bluebird

Bluebird flashes by,
concentration of the sky
crossing this black creek

At White Lily

Just about high noon
hummingbird refueling
at the white lily

Alike

Firefly in my hand
a single glow and then gone –
how alike we are

Hot Muggy

This hot muggy day
the white dog lolls in the stream –
why should she come out?

Doubloons

After thunderstorms,
two goldfinches in the oak –
doubloons in mid-air

Wave

Wave is, then is not,
crashing in lace on the shore –
I’m the same fabric

Insouciant

Insouciant snow,
morning glories in summer
as the day’s heat builds

Softly

Accompaniment
I recognize, my childhood
plays softly inside

Heat

The heat of summer
changes how all reds are red,
how yellow yellows

Fact Losing

I go most often
on fact losing missions, not on
the fact finding ones

That I Am

This fact that I am
or is it a fiction I
can’t find my way through?

Stilts

On stilts of sunlight
morning rises up through oaks
to grasp blue of sky

A Cloud

The blue of my eyes
suggests an internal sky
where I am a cloud

Thyme

A huge golden bee
in tiny pink blooming thyme -
this scent stops me, too

Two

Bull frogs are twanging
this hot close summer morning
after two murders

July 6, 2008

Last of the blackcaps,
the very first blackberry
fifteen feet apart

White Veins

Delicate white veins -
brown magnolia petal –
beauty in ruin

Scent

Lose track of myself?
all the time – can’t get the scent
to track myself down

Small

A tiny bird flies
by my ear so I feel wind
as small as it is

Plush

Plush of summer grass,
bare feet, half moon overhead,
syncopated bats

Dream

A dream shifts my mood
to melancholy – I sleep
inside my sorrow

Wet Heat

Wet heat weighs me down
I move in a summer daze –
chaste new moon thrills me

Pieces Of Sun

Swift slices of sun,
tiger swallowtails sail high
in summer green oaks

Shy

I’m shy, if I speak
it’s to get to know myself,
almost someone else

Mantis

Green praying mantis
more Giacometti than
Giacometti

Elbows

The old oak’s elbows
are awkward in all weathers –
ah, their inky grace!

No Good

The breeze in the trees
stirs them for no good reason –
just the way I think

Think

As the heat eases
and the evening brings breezes
I can think again

On The March

Summer luxury
morning sound of cicadas
squash blooms on the march

Combs

Breeze stirs each green leaf
as it combs through the garden
in search of nothing

Praia

Old man on the beach
where I was young – two of me
stare at foaming waves

Back

Back to Bahia
which possessed me, so became
a myth in my mind

White Ringed

Down the black creek’s spine
kingfisher with white ringed neck –
urgent his errand

Small Boy

A little boy’s eyes
remind me that the white dog
is a miracle

Chipmunk

Chipmunk in brown suit
up on a gray teak armchair,
deliberating

Pepper

After long green time,
the pepper has become flame,
fire for fire eaters

Daisies

Tiny shy daisies,
beside the thyme, unblinking
all through their short lives

Lover

Longing for the rain
is longing for a lover
who will bring life back

Next To

Somewhere is always
next to nowhere, the town with
secret citizens

Sullen Skies

To live or to die –
I’m doing both, all at once
under sullen skies

Goodbye

How to say goodbye
to the sun and to myself,
to the moon and me?

In Glide

Over the river
a great blue heron in glide
silent as the moon

Summer

Monarch on milkweed,
two swallowtails on thistle,
bee in tall daisy

Oak’s Foot

Gray question mark cat
disappears into the oak
at whose foot she sleeps

James.O’Conor. August 9, 2008

Monarch butterfly,
second of the year, flies by –
memorial glide?

Black Wasps

Black wasps in the mint
have driven the sweet bees out –
unequal contest

Enter

Enter history
as a leaf tumbling to ground
to become the ground

Lushness

Summer’s lush riot
that predicts rot and ruin –
beauty bares its teeth

First Scarlet

This first scarlet leaf,
drop of blood promising more,
time the deepest wound

So Rich

This hundred armed oak,
proud green against a blue sky,
so rich in acorns

1966

Back from Bahia,
the thunder of candomble
ringing in my ears

Sudden

Sudden as lightning
I’m an old man – the thunder
crashes in my heart

Bug

Am I just a bug
caught in the bottle that’s me –
I’m green, small and lost

Paradise

However I sing,
I’m off-key – so locked out of
paradise of song

Far Short

I’ve fallen far short
of who I mistook for me –
curse and blessing, both

Question Mark

Gray question mark cat
fast asleep on pink cushion –
why do you move me?

Cathedral

Towering thistle
is butterfly cathedral
with soft pink blossoms

Shade

Sorrow comes with me
into this summer sunshine –
I am my own shade
Here, Gone

Hummingbird – here, gone –
moist green morning’s not the same –
I’m here and gone, too

Clematis

Snow white clematis
in late summer cascades down
the massive old oak

Prospecting Eye

Goldfinch at twilight,
a sudden surprising swoop,
thrills prospecting eye

Rhapsody

Rhapsody in dust
is the gray question mark cat,
flopping and rolling

Rio, September 8, 2008

To change continents,
exchange last breaths of summer
for winter’s last breaths

Stupor

Stupor in the west,
chill fog in San Francisco,
inside and outside

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco bay
as blue as ever, blue as
I remember me

Market

Unimaginable
this mushroom here before me
lemon lion’s mane

Tumbling

I tumble in dream
like clothes in washing machine,
wake wet with wonder

Goldfinch

The goldfinch that flies
is not the same bird that lights
on my mind’s thistle..

Dark Line

Distant pelicans,
dark line on sea sullen blue –
I’m part of them, too

Ink Against Cloud

Pelicans are first
calligraphy on the bay,
then ink against cloud

Drake’s Beach

My bare foot touches
at Drake’s beach Pacific fringe –
cold is sudden, sweet

Sweet Peas

Sweet peas blooming pink
in salt flecked breeze – how little
it takes to find joy

Cliffs

In cliffs of Drake’s beach
I see myriad faces,
sand, rust, maybe me

Old Drake

I’m like old Drake, too
I touch and then must let go,
sail my own ocean

Taste Of Ocean

A taste of ocean
lets me be less and be free
as spray in the wind

Two Cormorants

Two cormorants dive
in unison, kin of ink
hunting in the murk

Voice Of Nothing

I’m voice of nothing –
miraculous – it forms sounds –
returns to silence

Lady Bug

One lady bug, orange,
in pocked well-traveled driftwood –
when did she hop on?

Liz

Ninety-four years old
dwindling she’s a sparrow
who hops off, takes flight

Clover

White clover is back,
the snows of yesteryear, here,
sweetened for summer

Hot And Humid

It’s hot and humid,
weather magnolia’s loved
since the beginning

Leisure

How much is leisure
the opposite of work, how
much work all its own?

Noose

Summer’s in full swing,
long shortening days, the noose
around its neck, loose

Embargo

An embargo stills
my tongue – what’s so precious, moon.
that I can’t say it?.

Bloom On Bloom

Milkweed’s sweet rotten
smell draws swallowtails to light,
bloom on dusky blooms

Like A Sun

One orange nasturtium
a fierce sun in the fragrant
purple lavender

White Snapdragons

Dragons with cloud jaws
fastened to green stems, tranquil
as twilight deepens

Thick Scent

Thick scent of milkweed
just before the thunderstorm –
bees stay hard at work

Inaccurate Slant

Inaccurate slant
of my small mind on all things –
every clown’s a king

To Be Lost

Each day is a maze,
mind is the seeker of threads,
the thing to be lost

Monarch

Monarch flew an orange
stuttering helix up through
apple tree to blue

Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope, me,
yesterdays, tomorrows, now,
one stained teeming glass

Moon Alone

The lightning bugs have
done their work, leaving the moon
alone with the dark

Evaristo Medina

The gourd fish that’s signed
“Evaristo Medina”
swims decades with me

2006

I’m making my way
through another year even
as my way makes me

Never Before

Morning breeze in oaks –
I’ve watched this a thousand times
and never before

Looking For Words

I’m looking for words,
phantom flashing fireflies
in my mind’s evening

Becoming Rose

Oak leaf hydrangea
has blushed a becoming rose
on pale green petals

Old Sorrow

On a sweet morning
an old sorrow’s present new
and I’m helpless still

Green Momentum

Summer glides its course
charged with vast green momentum,
no way to look back

Awkward

Mastery’s awkward,
as is mystery, secret
the young can not know

Twilight Bird Calls

Bird calls at twilight,
a summery summary
of what can’t be known

Sticky Weather

In sticky weather,
stargazer lilies perfume
the entire garden

Huge Gold

Under the rumble
of afternoon thunder –
huge gold sunflowers

Summerscent

Summerscent of rot
comes faintly up off the land –
white clover’s still sweet

Aging Mind

In my aging mind –
yesterday and tomorrow –
hopefully confused

Becalmed

I’m irrelevant,
becalmed in being’s shallows –
or are these the deeps?

Just Waking Up

Tomorrow’s a dream
and so, too, is yesterday –
I’m just waking up

Mushroom

Mushroom’s a missile
launched from underground that can’t
quite break free of earth

Walking Junkyard

Don’t know what’s in me
let alone how it got there –
I’m walking junkyard

Lebanon, 2006

Murder never helps
drive the terror farther off,
but makes it a home

Somewhere

Jagged canyon walls
intrude between the seconds –
somewhere a river

Leaving Part

Death is the drama
whose leading part, leaving part
each one comes to play

Wasp

Wasp in blooming thyme,
black and full of menace as
a helicopter

Peaceheads

Tall stargazer stem
is a lance carrying pink
fierce fragrant peaceheads

Equator

A beige Port Clyde rock
with eggshell white equator –
a world in my hand

Hat

My daughter brought me
a hat from Australia –
she’s gone beyond me

Bare Feet

My bare feet find smiles
in the moist cool morning grass –
how can I resist?

Dead Mouse

Dead mouse in the grass
and gray cat matter-of-fact
asleep in the shade

Delicate

Something delicate
is the source of all my strength,
something less than me

Collage

I snip surroundings
to hazard guesses of what
might be inside me

Beside The Point

I’m beside the point -
I can’t reach out and touch it –
it’s shy as I am

Pack

The white dog and I
find on the floor the comfort
of the pack we lack

Or What?

I’ve nothing to say,
yet I hunger to be heard –
irony or what?

Almost Cool

Evening’s almost cool
as the day’s fierce heat retreats –
mind changes its clothes

Fine Fierce

Heat brings cicadas
up to a fine fierce frenzy
which calms, collects me

Terraced Garden

A terraced garden,
many years in the making
like a single glance

Old Screen Porch

The old screen porch holds
white dog and me as the rain
pours out of white sky

Sieve And Sand

I’m the one I was,
also the ones I wasn’t –
I’m sieve and sand both

Placid Rabbit

Placid brown rabbit
munches clover the color
of his cottontail

Fox’s Bark

Fox’s distressed bark,
bright beyond the reach of brass,
flame leaping from dark

Travel

I travel remaining
still within myself, watching
myself come and go

Samoyed

Samoyed, white dog,
Shira, song and poetry,
four paws on my trail

Orange

Summer’s first monarch –
once there were thousands and more –
orange in morning breeze

Pale Fingers

Morning’s pale fingers
fondle the moist of meadows
pat the grazing deer

In The Drizzle

The fireflies flicker
eagerly in the drizzle
after twilight storm

Mint’s Delirium

Mint’s delirium
floats on the staggering heat –
gray cat sleeps in it

Dream River

Beside dream river
Dad and I hiked so many
green and speechless miles

No Secrets

Happiness – a guest
who comes unannounced and claims
to have no secrets

Frustrated

Mosquitoes surround
the gray cat – they’re frustrated
by her thick smooth fur

Pine Nuts

Pine nuts come from pines,
but everywhere is pining
that’s the fruit of love

Living Frontier

I’m living frontier,
an edgy intermingling
of what’s found and flight

Qana, July 2006

I’m diving the past
to grasp the present wreckage –
all the dead children

Turn Away

I would turn away,
but what I flee follows me –
I’m in Lebanon

Noon Heat

Deep purple basil
is soaking up summer sun –
noon heat is intense

Twin Beauties

The beauty of peace
and the beauty of combat
are always at war

Sixty Years In Peace

Sixty years in peace
I have lived now and struggled –
immense good fortune

Baton

What is this sorrow,
but the conductor’s baton
marking time’s music?

Bull’s Eyes

Bull’s eyes scattered through
these green woods – tiny spiders
fish soft summer air

No Remorse

I feel no remorse
when I crash a spider’s web –
expect none from quake

Still Brown Rabbit

Cabbage butterfly
buzzes the still brown rabbit
in the white clover

Immense Slaughter

The immense slaughter
that is the wealth of nature –
why should I escape?

Lost Books

Yellow swallowtails
ripped from lost books of the sun
flit afternoon dreams

Just The Same

Sixty years old now
and just the same as I was
in my second year

Without A Map

I keep slipping away –
where I go I just don’t know –
man without a map

Mouse Guts

Gray cat left mouse guts
on the porch - I think of war
in lands close and far

What Tailor

What tailor cuts hope
to make it suit what can be –
how does he measure?

Late Summer’s Whimsy

Late summer’s whimsy –
fertility’s foolishness –
tomatoes on the ground

Morning And

Sunday morning and
quiet and the lift of light
up through breeze stirred oaks

Forests Of Feeling

I wander forests
of feeling, try to ask fox
what he knows for sure

Almost Home

My life’s an exile
in country that’s almost home,
borders never still

Words Change

Words change as I speak
so I don’t know what I’ve said,
what I meant to say

Tiny Packets

Fabulous tangle
of cerebrum where light lives
in tiny packets

Wild Grapes

Wild blue-purple grapes
are almost all skin and seed,
a long way from wine

Gout

My right ankle aches –
the years have given me gout –
I still love to walk

Bright Red Seeds

Jack in the Pulpit
is loaded with bright red seeds,
trying to make more

Goldfinch And

Up into the green –
goldfinch and two cardinals –
color in the breeze

Still Riding

Along that dead log,
new crop of Dryads’ saddles –
so they’re still riding

Can It Be

What’s most obvious
most intrigues me – can it be
that I really am?

Soap Bubble

I keep throwing spears
at the soap bubble of self
but it never bursts

August Tomatoes

August tomatoes
each big as an asteroid
each bite red delight

Don’t Ask

Is there more to love
than hope and need conspiring?
Don’t ask an old man...

Prison Prism

Everywhere I’ve been,
I’ve been only in myself –
my prison prism

Green Chestnut

Single green chestnut
spiny as a sea urchin
hides a brown planet

A Story

I am a story
blended of, descended from
millions of stories

Settled Middle

My hopes deceive me,
as do my despairs – how rare
the settled middle

Sandcastles

Building sandcastles
by this sea – tides carry off
hope and memory

Like Phosphorus

Wild white clematis
burns like phosphorus in rain
that just won’t let up

Bushel

Despair’s the bushel
whose dark conceals the tiny
intense light of hope

One Week

One week of rain now
and it feels like forever
just as the drought did

Broken And Whole

My heart is broken
and whole as I watch the rain,
think of those I’ve lost

Mist I’m Made Of

Into emptiness
I keep looking – where did mist
I’m made of begin?

Surprise

Sour cherries glow
as red as coals, but don’t burn
the mouth they surprise

“Live small...”

“Live small and be large”
slight motto for a cruel time
when sloth and greed rule

Now Is

Now is the surround
that’s always here, for it stays
even as it goes

Blackbirds

The hypnotic grace
of birds in flight setting type
on the sky’s blue page

Fog SF

This fog is bracing,
muffles sight and cleanses mind -
soft life from the sea

Oakland Docks

Shining flightless cranes
lean over hulls heaped with “goods”
or should I say “bads"?

“Your days are numbered”

“Your days are numbered”
says the setting sun - I know,
long for the new dawn

As Little

Mother, dead mother,
you hear me as little now
as you did in life

Our Boots

Our boots by the wall,
dusty from the morning’s ride,
still and eloquent

Llama

I sit on the porch
and look out on the valley,
watch one brown llama

Curtain

Curtain of purple
delphinium by the creek
rushing down Lundy

Out The Window

Out the window now
mist shrouded hills running north,
still horses grazing

Small Black Frog

My horse’s hoof just
missed a small black frog - neither
of them were concerned

Whispered Thoughts

I whisper my thoughts
to the white dog, sure she’ll keep
my confidences

Abiding

The abiding green
speechlessness of pines under
the great mountain’s brow

Raccoons’ Window

The wild clematis
has almost reached the raccoons’
window in the oak

Rain Hesitates

The breeze barely stirs
the huge limbs of these old trees
as rain hesitates

Lost And Found

Each and every day
is lost even as its found -
memory’s a dream

Near 60

What I know takes me
by surprise as if I were
twenty and dreaming

Pasture

I move the fences
in my mind trying to keep
me in green pasture

So Many Beauties

So many beauties
have perished but still burn bright
in my heart’s night sky

All That’s Left

I’m all that’s left now
of so many that I’ve loved -
I cling like a leaf

My Sixtieth Year

My sixtieth year
and now autumn comes around,
death wrapped in rainbow

Soft Flights

Autumn’s beginning
in soft flights of golden leaves
in cool sheets of mist

40 Years Ago

Forty years ago
I was harvesting gold wheat
in Chanzeaux, green dream

Never

Time can slow and speed,
but never swerves from the course
it and I must go

Thought’s Mist

The cool of evening
settling through the green of trees
finds me in thought’s mist

Lost

Lost in reflection
I cross the path and wander
deep in these old woods

Bounding Deer

I love bounding deer,
how their leaps inscribe half hoops
in the forest green

Offshore Islands

The offshore islands
disappear and go to sleep -
waves lap with soft tongues

New World

When I go to sleep,
I wake up in a new world,
page after bright page

Opium

Opium’s a friend
because it banishes pain
and much else, alas

Drugs You Need

Drugs you need have made
your face blank and soft and sad
despite your fierce will

No Place

Looking at your face,
I take in the sadness you
have no place to keep

Hatless

I greet the acorn
that falls hatless at my feet
and then rolls and stops

Black Wasps

Black wasps in mint are
so massive the flowers bob
as the wasps hug them

Shadow And Light

Shadow meets light where
countless alphabets struggle
to be born and write

First Apple

Ma, the first apple
fell from the tree you gave us
when you were alive

Message

Clouds drifting blue sky
can’t decide on a message
so just sail along

Spicebush Swallowtail

Spicebush swallowtail
on wild white clematis - light’s
the spice of spices

Not Worth A Damn

Prayer is not worth
a damn unless it’s tattered
the way our hopes are

Clay Colored Toad

A clay-colored toad
motionless on a clay road -
white dog misses it

Shoreland 1003

Blue Lake Michigan
on the bright edge of autumn -
first day of college

Depths Of This Winter

I will be sixty
in the depths of this winter -
snow already drifts

Same Light?

Is the light the same
as when I was young, before
I saw through myself?

Autumn Raspberries

Autumn raspberries
darker than the red of leaves,
and sweeter than blood

Mulberries In Spring

Mulberries in spring
and the raspberries of fall -
white dog devours them

As Pale Pink

Before its blooming
milkweed blushes as pale pink
as the shyest dawn

Boulder

Father, each boulder
is your monument for me,
you, who loved the earth

First Yellow Orange

The first yellow orange
squash blossom was just open
early this morning

What Music?

What music do they,
white cabbage butterflies, hear
dancing in the air?

Rapturous

Rapturous, the scent
of milkweed crosses sunlit
clearing in morning

Content In Mint

Cabbage butterflies
are content in mint as breeze
ruffles the dapple

Not To Be Resolved

Knowledge is freedom
and tyranny both, riddle
not to be resolved

As Grass

As grass holds the ground,
I try to grasp a bit, hold
as I go to seed

Power’s So Hungry

Power’s so hungry,
it tries to devour pity
which sticks in its craw

Miscegenation

Brown as chocolate,
this magnolia blossom
after three white days

Golden Bee

Sky of powder blue
and the green day is immense
with a golden bee

Cloud Pagodas

Cloud pagodas float
in the soft blue summer sky -
cloud colored dog sleeps

Robins Arguing

Robins arguing
as first fireflies flicker
and sky is pale blue

No Fire

No fire can burn love
to gray whispering ashes,
nor make it forget

Napping

In afternoon heat
tiger lilies are napping
along the roadside

Indigo Bunting

Indigo bunting -
I had lost not just the name
but also that shade

Babel

I’m dreaming seven
different languages at once -
and I understand

Broadcasting

After the rainstorm
milkweed resumes broadcasting
ecstatic odor

Gnarl

I’d speak with the gnarl
of tongues buried deep in wood,
their thrust out of sight

Two Infections

A cold has me and
I can’t let go of myself -
that’s two infections

Circumstance Serpent

Circumstance serpent
winds around me while I’m not
looking - then squeezes

Flavors

I miss my parents,
missed them while they were alive -
different flavors

Old Oak

That old oak has been
half dead for a decade now -
how life clings to it

Prospector

I watch lightning bugs,
prospector crazed with delight
by a dark river

Green Of Summer

On green of summer
the white dog is a snow patch
that moves but won’t melt

Graveyard

Here in the graveyard
no one but stones and silence -
butterflies play tag

Making Them Up

My parents - I can’t tell
where remembering stops and
making them up starts

Slab Of What

Sometimes I feel I’m
a slab of what I don’t know,
a very strange rock

Adagio

Early summer cool
and lightning bugs flickering
gold adagio

Figures

Geese, ducks, herons, deer -
figures in this morning’s fog
and white dog and I

Palominos

Grasses bend their heads -
palominos in a field
in early July

Blue-Gray Boulder

Morning sun and grief,
how that blue-gray boulder sits,
persists in itself

Brown Bouquets

The cicadas pruned
the tips of small oak branches
so left brown bouquets

Ever Said

I knew more of you
than you ever said, maybe
more, Dad, than you knew

Stuck

My whole life I’ve loved
thunder, as if it could say
what’s stuck in my throat

Cotton

The sky is cotton,
yesterday’s forgotten,
tomorrow’s a dream

Sleight Of Mind

Sleight of mind fools
me over and over, but I
can’t tell myself why

Sudan, 2004

Grief for mango trees
of Darfur - this is murder
of the deepest green

What?

What am I thinking?
I’d get as straight an answer
if I asked a stone.

Homebody

I’m a homebody
who’s not at home even when
I’m right here at home

Deep Inside

Home is deep inside
where all that I’ve lost still lives,
interrogates dream

Even Near Sixty

Even near sixty,
I lose track of myself when
I look at the stars

Infinite

Each trip’s infinite
I never know where I go
or if I’ll come back

Pink Tongue

The white dog is named
song or poem, as you like,
but her tongue is pink

Enchanted Snow

Enchanted snow flakes -
white cabbage butterflies swirl
over woods’ green floor

Tiny

A tiny beige frog,
the size of my fingernail,
hops - a clay hiccup

Stargazer Lilies

Stargazer lilies
are perfumed towers under
the moon’s quiet eye

What Tunes

The wind doesn’t know
itself what tunes it will find
to play in oak woods

For The Living

The quiet of death
is only for the living
who make all the noise

Cosi Fan Tutti, Variation, 7-11-2004

So we all do and
so we are all undone and
so embrace the earth

Sullen

Heavy and sullen
summer’s at its peak - white mold
on the green squash leaves

First Squash

I picked the first squash,
yellow saucer full of seeds
and no aliens

Statue of Liberty

From Battery Park
the Statue of Liberty
is the size I am

Monkey Island

Myself a monkey,
Manhattan, largest monkey
island ever built

NYC

All these people - real
and hallucinatory,
bedded in dream’s depths

Worm Kisses

My parents are both
decomposing, father, first -
are worm kisses sweet?

Sway

I can’t imagine
the hurtling roaring subway,
just ride it and sway

Artichoke

Artichoke - thistle
whose heart’s a delicacy,
soft, tasty center

Point

Cool muggy morning -
a woodpecker makes his point
over and over

My Blood

While it’s biting me
I smash a mosquito, smear
my own bright red blood

Bile

My sense of humor -
so full of bile it threatens
to choke on itself

Secret

Father, you were not
a secret, and so took me
past the bounds of shame

Rainy Season

A rainy season -
yet here is a hummingbird
by a red flower

Lick

I laugh at myself
as rain pours down in torrents
and I lick at it

Tether

I’m dreaming my way
to the end of my tether,
how I become new

August 1

Hasta blooming white
make an august innocence
against sea of green

West Coast 2004

Over Utah 4 August

Sky over Utah -
green irrigation dots pressed
against lean mountains

Buson

Buson in cement
on the Embarcadero -
stiff breeze off the Bay

Alcatraz

Green container ship
silhouetted in front of
stone still Alcatraz

Hulk

The older I get
the more I know I’m a hulk
in which others rest

Little I Am

How little I am -
how more and more I become
less and less and less

Cotton

Like tufts of cotton
fog perches atop Golden
Gate’s ruddy towers

Shape

Shape of my substance
was yours before mine, mother -
and now you are gone

Ill And Cure

No way to give life
without also giving death,
ill and cure in one

Freshness

As time steals freshness
memories of memories
are what’s left of me

Bellowing

The thrill of that note
of this black bull bellowing,
making sure I know

Irrigation

Whisper of water
in irrigation ditches
moving through the green

Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro
dapple of banana and
coffee interspersed

Harmless

Harmless happiness
of inhabited instant,
slick twist of now this

Immortals, August 9

Do the immortals
come her to sit on soft clouds
of pink wildflowers?

Lightning Fire

Smoke comes from the north -
lightning’s set another fire
haze changes all hues

White Afternoon

From Yosemite
smoke over the Sawtooth Ridge
turns afternoon white

Dead Sea Otter, August 20

A dead sea otter
still swimming on his back, cast
in Morro Beach sand

Live Sea Otter

A live sea otter
swimming in afternoon swells,
pleased, playful, pleasing

SF August 21

Rose scent in salt air
San Francisco in August -
and the nasturtiums

Boat of Reads, August 22

In my boat of reads
I’ve floated through countless worlds
that could never be

Before

My dead parents live
in my heart, as I in theirs
before I was born

Without Dog

Without the white dog,
whose leg is injured, I walk,
tentative orphan

Bright Peeps

Bright peeps of bird song
lift a canopy of fog -
forest floor’s greening

Quarter

Year’s a quarter gone
as small turtles sun themselves
on an old gray log

Last Fire

Last fire of the year,
saying goodbye to a friend
never without cheer

Spring Snow

First azalea
had opened one yellow bloom
before the snow came

Close

You can come as close
as you want, now that you’re gone -
there’s nothing to fear

Garbage Dump

Crows, seagulls, black, white,
both know heaven’s scent still lurks
in a garbage dump

Dunes

Even when we think
we’re settled, we’re still nomads
in memory’s dunes

Spring Cleaning

At 3AM we hear
mice stirring in the walls - can
it be spring cleaning?

Robin And Squirrel

Robin and squirrel
meet in a flowering plum,
then each one takes flight

Bloom And Blush

Now’s season of bloom
and blush, colors delicate
before summer heat

At Anchor

The weeping cherry’s
pink petals ride at anchor
on drooping branches

Two Lips

Forever, never
are the two lips together
that pronounce, kiss “now”

Least Monotony

Over and over,
spring happens, untroubled by
least monotony

Ash

Ash is soft, soothing
to worn hands, as if, transformed,
lost trees still sheltered

Softness Of Sleep

The softness of sleep
conceals the cunning of dream,
elegant as fox

Up, Up

Mourning dove twitters
up, up and away - I stay
behind in thought’s shade

Stillwater

Geese on still water
commune with their reflections
even as I do

Wildflowers

On the forest floor,
tiniest white eyes are open,
stare up at blue sky

Shad Tree

The shad tree flowers
schools of snowflakes racing to
climb back up the sky

Grief

My head aches with grief
and something else I can’t name,
what it is to be

Tiny Day

The sky is as blue
as a cap of robin’s egg
that holds tiny day

Planted

A person planted
in memory makes blossoms
pink as a cherry’s

Morning Walk

Morning walk takes me
through many decades in bloom
all at once this spring

Yellow Swallowtails

Yellow swallowtails -
spring morning surprise after
last night’s thunderstorms

Trilium

Purple trilium
is blooming, royal color
on the forest floor

Slow

On this cloudy day
the question mark cat is slow
until she pounces

Empty

Teak chair in the woods
is empty since I ‘m not there -
or could it be I am?

Unprepared

The death of a friend
is coming - I’m as prepared
as I’ll ever be

Talk

I talk with myself,
not excessively impressed
with what I’m hearing

Rain With Salt

Tears are rain with salt
and they wash the deep canyons
of hurt - sting, sing, soothe

Before Cicadas

Before cicadas,
the lilies of the valley
bloom in still white bells

Stitch

I’m an illusion,
a stitch in a tapestry
that lasts an instant

Puffs Of Wind

When I’m gone, I hope
that you’ll find something once me
in these puffs of wind

Deepest Memory

Smell of you haunts me
as sometimes it comes from me,
deepest memory

In Flower

Under elms I grew,
moved later to oaks, these now
in flower with me

Old Pink Dogwood

The old pink dogwood
is dying and still in bloom -
dogwood to the last

Each Second

Each second holds more
than I dare assimilate -
minute’s infinite

Explosion

Explosion from earth
is programmed in cicadas,
then light, music, mate

Old Tow Mule

Like an old tow mule,
I’m hauling the past forward
into the future

Jacob’s Ladder

How white are the blooms,
the rungs of Jacob’s ladder
the bees are climbing

Smell Of Chives

After lawn mowing -
scent of chives spreading upwards
through April twilight

Love Poem

Can a love poem
be as short as this - of course,
since our lives are, too

Dilated

The peony buds
are dilated now, so white
can be seen - bloom soon

Hands Off

Death and life just can’t
keep their hands off each other,
mingle in the wind

Babble

My babble’s fluent
held by what banks I don’t know,
nor where lies the sea

Snowing Cherry

Breezy afternoon
snowing cherry petals in
the old still courtyard

From Eden

A breeze from Eden
touches my cheek at twilight
and goes on its way

Snow Mountain

That snow mountain
is the tree peony burst
into lavish bloom

Cobra Lily

The cobra lily
has a throat of gold flame
hidden in the shade

Notebook

Of scraps of myself,
I make a notebook, which then
starts to sing and dance

Heron In Mist

That great blue heron’s
a note of dusk’s saxophone
suspended in mist

Marvel Of Mourning

Marvel of mourning -
how it enriches green leaves -
lives, breaths in the grass

Morel

Morel, dark cortex
crenulated on white stem,
beautiful as brain

Gold Peonies

Lions who open
their eyes lazily to see -
those gold peonies

White Mist

This morning’s white mist
reminds me of my mother
who has disappeared

You (For Joan, May 9, 2004)

Ordinary day,
this one both golden and green
is rooted in you

Oak Flowers

White dog’s fluffy tail
is full of long oak flowers,
so her wag’s golden

Legs Loaded

Legs loaded with gold,
bumblebee’s a treasure ship
in white peony

Time’s Everything

Time’s everything
and all around, illusion
of all illusions

Perfumed

Night is falling on
this perfumed day of mid-May,
swift ripening spring

Air Is

Ordinary air’s
unimaginably free -
it can simply be

Inchworm

In a white blizzard
an inchworm drops on my neck
from the wild cherry

Green God

The green god lives now
in each and every tree,
stirs with the least breeze

Nothing (Cambridge, May, 2004)

Nothing has happened
but life since I left these streets
forty years ago

Brood X

Brood X cicadas
are starting to get it on,
high electric hum

Each Leaf

Each leaf is a dish
aimed at the sun, receiving
on the life channel

Single Center

No single center
imagines how small or great
its own circle is

Fading Light

Evening’s fading light,
melancholy remembrance,
anticipation

Steel Band

Cicadas throbbing
like a steel band of the air
after the rainstorm

Sixth Sense

My mortality
is a sixth sense that defies
both beauty and truth

Mower

These false strawberries
are true rubies glowing now
in the grass I mow

White As Stars

As white as stars,
tiny clovers lift their heads
from a sky of green

Pink

Beneath cicadas’
racket, May rhododendrons
bloom pink and serene

Doe

A doe, listening
like me to the insistent
din of cicadas

Onion Domes

Chives make a city
of graceful onion domes on
slender green towers

Red - Eyed Cicadas

Red eyed cicadas,
ruby false strawberries mixed
in emerald lawn

When Print Fights

I’m moved when print fights
to get free of the page, run
the huge risk of life

Two Suomos

Grief and I wrestle
like two Suomos only I’m
the one always thrown

Mother

In the dust of books,
where you hid from life, I track
you now that you’re gone

Headlights

Cicadas’ red eyes
are like sparks that have become
an insect’s headlights

Tent Of Light

Morning’s tent of light
is pitched beneath a sky
blue as any sea

First Birds

The first birds calling
slashes of color on night
before sun’s first light

Blood Tinged

Mourning doves cooing -
white heads of clover on green -
dawn sky tinged with blood

Dun Does

Dun does are dancers
leaping through these spring pine woods,
showing snow white tails

Tethered Butterflies

Tethered butterflies,
lilies adore the hot sun
near summer solstice

White Horse

Dream brings my father,
ancient, cantering a horse
that’s as white as now

Cat Mint

The cat’s in the mint,
then rolling on her black back,
intoxicated

How Deep

No easy mission,
to survive simply, to feel
how deep the wounds go

Real Arrows

It’s a paradox
that when words relax, they come
taut, launch real arrows

Spring Rain

A sudden spring rain
soaks the white dog and me, too -
we both look sheepish

Darting Dragonfly

Darting dragonfly,
threadless needle sewing air,
the fabric of light

Half Afraid

Thunder scared the dog,
so she looked up at me, saw
I was half afraid

These Lures

Father, you’ve vanished,
no trace left behind, except
for these lines, these lures

Matched

Cicadas - many
compared to us, yet so few
matched with molecules

Disaster

Disaster’s the star
that burns always too brightly
in hope’s firmament

Lost Question

I’m shy of myself
and wander this paradise
like a lost question

Blue Ease

A day slips away
as pelican’s industry
contrasts with my ease

Billion Years

These beaches have sand
to make a billion years pass
through night’s narrow hips

Soldier Crab Armies

Soldier crab armies
are on the move in moonlight -
little do they know

Sting Ray

Sting ray in shallows
a melodious shuffle
this side of flounder

Whispers

So many whispers
snake their ways through the domain
of what I can’t say

My Blue Eye

I’m made to be, cease
in a lost sun’s golden blink,
my blue eye, the sky

Lost Horizon

Horizon is lost,
blue into blue before black,
stars studded above

Vaster

Whimsy is a dream
of exit in a blue maze
vaster than I know

Dawn Breeze

Clouds are boiling up
from the horizon - dawn breeze
ripples purple sea

Orphaned

This is how it is -
when I dream I am no more
my words are orphaned

Rooster Knows

Rooster knows day cracks
always a new way, each pink
and silver new found

Frayed Green Sabers

This banana tree
brandishes all its frayed green
sabers in the wind

Palm Fronds

Palm fronds glisten green
under chalk runes written on
powder sky blue board

Clouds Trekking

Clouds trekking blue sky
are an alphabet before
any alphabet

Suddenly

Suddenly I find
I’m looking back on my life -
a fable, too true

Other

If I could have been
someone other than myself,
who would I have been?

Bows of Cloud

Unstrung bows of cloud
float across powder blue sky -
where’s Odysseus?

The Lost

In transparent blue
of a green day on St. John
I keep losing me

And Tang

Green turtle and tang
light filtering through the sea -
immediacy

Sometimes

Quiet certainty
of my sometimes ownership
of myself has gone

White Cloud Sheep

Indigo ocean,
stir of green in morning breeze
white cloud sheep graze sky

Bird Of Ink

Twin circumflexes
wheel high in blue sky - frigate
is the bird of ink

Horizon Words

There, horizonwards,
I look for horizon words
to join sea, sky, me

Weathered Rock

Weathered rock speaks of
immense force and subtlety
joined over eons

Peacock Flounder

Peacock flounder is
much more delicate than silk,
then becomes a rock

Restless Wind

The wind is restless,
works its way down the coast,
unknown to minnows

Fossil

I found the fossil
of an ancient dream of me -
couldn’t find myself

If I Knew

If I knew what I
was doing here, could I still
grasp sweetness of breeze?

Blue Is Blue

Catalog blue’s shades -
blue is blue, wanders away,
returns to be blue

Little Blue Tang

Little blue tang have
the foreheads of buffalo,
mass in submerged herds

Scent Of Chives

Not even this storm
can erase the scent of chives -
now is their moment

Sixtieth Spring

My sixtieth spring
and I know the score by heart
and yet each note’s new

Amber Ocean

This tea in glass cup
lets me sail amber ocean
and then swallow it

Piety

Golden daffodils
bowing their heads in the storm -
is this piety?

Old Old Friend

Tendons of his hand,
much tighter than they once were -
we shake and he shakes

Bald Eagle

Bald eagle’s white tail
floats effortlessly as bird
traverses gray lake

All These Years

After all these years
of living here with myself
I’m still a stranger

Into My Blue

Into my blue eyes
the eagle flew from blue sky
and is soaring still

White Flag

White petals migrate
on spring wind - can that white flag
cross shivering pond?

Bloodroot

Bloodroot blooms as white
as new snow all though the woods
and it has gold pupils

Death Relishes

Death relishes spring
as much as fall or winter -
it measures each bloom

Why, Eye

Why, eye, does it seem
that the red strawberry dreams
just because it gleams?

Jess M.

Robin’s egg I see
where it was decades ago,
long before you died

Alchemy’s Truth

Each story I tell,
by reason of its telling,
has alchemy’s truth

Curtain

With each shift of breeze,
cherry blossom curtain is
made more delicate

Aftermath

Aftermath, the growth
when hay’s been cut, how the dead
come up in my mind

What I See

What I see surrounds
what I can’t say, inkling in
extremity, this

All Year Long

I wait all year long
for the cherry to explode
into rich pink bloom

Black Limbs

Cherry’s beautiful
even in winter, black limbs
writing on white snow

Inner Emblems

When sun opens them,
red tulips show black rotors -
could they spin and lift?

Poor In Honors

I’m poor in honors,
poor probably in honor
as dandelion

New Lettuce

New lettuce is up
in fresh green dots and dashes
against the brown earth

Cold April Fog

In cold April fog
tulips fold their petals tight,
glow more intensely

Shad Tree

Blooms on the shad tree
merge with fog and so extend
themselves everywhere

What New

Jack in the pulpit
is trying to figure out
what new he can speak

Miniscule

These minuscule lines
try to net matter smaller
still and fresh and free

Blade Of Grass

Time that lets me live
kills me, too - I acquiesce
like a blade of grass

April And

Spring green pitches tents
throughout the woods - I’m inclined
only to idle

Far From Me

I can imagine
pathways leading far from me
I may yet travel

Translate

Twittering of birds
seems to translate the tulips
in a new language

Vast City

Old dead sycamore
is majestic in decay,
founds a vast city

Green River

Hundreds of times, more,
I’ve walked this path that flows
like a green river

Litter

Bright flags of fervor,
tulip petals now litter
the bed where they slept

Surprise

What I’m waiting for
there’s no way to know, for life
like death is surprise

Rachel, 18

You are like a dream,
child glowing green as I gray,
start to flake away

Fits, Starts

My past’s invention,
fabulous ghostly brocade,
woven by fits, starts

Winter Bones

Trees are lacy green
I’m forgetting the bareness
of their winter bones

Joints Predict

I’m of the age now
when my joints predict weather -
how I love sunshine

Back Up

Dogwoods in bloom - snow’s
climbed back up the trees, trying
to regain the sky

Pilfered Lilacs

Pilfered lilacs smell
even sweeter than the ones
that I’ve grown myself

Worry

I keep worrying
although violets have not
a clue why I do

Let Logic Go

I let logic go
I ‘m free to describe what I
see, what’s free of me

Dream It

Each instant’s so full,
so fragile and gone before
I dream it a name

Wild Light

I’m lost in wild light
I’ve known since my infancy,
before words had life

For LG

The solipsist’s muse
is a bubble in trouble -
I speak me, mean you

On Maple Root

Tiger swallowtail
lights on maple root, lapped at
by a cold blue lake

Like Talons

Majestic in flight,
bald eagle threatens with calls
that are like talons

Spring Blizzard

A stand of dogwoods
by the lake’s burly shoulder
makes a spring blizzard

Wild

Suddenly - morel -
in the middle of nowhere
where I am, too - wild

Greedy

Luck makes me greedy
instead of quite satisfied -
why, violet, why?

May 10, 2005

A beautiful day
is coming in the window
beckoning me out

Going On

How the world goes on
going on while in my mind
it’s just as it was

Cobra Lilly

Book, cobra lily,
teak chair, mild May afternoon -
who knows what I am?

Unseen Birds

A sleeping white dog,
pink peonies in a vase,
speech of unseen birds

Prayer Flags

The wind has eaten
two Buddhist prayer flags that
once were red and blue

Imperceptibly

Imperceptibly
afternoon ebbs into night,
as sky finds star eyes

Restless Art

This wind’s restless art
combs through the trees and through me,
never satisfied

Temporary

The sad certainty
is I’m temporary like
butterfly and bee

Red Winged Blackbird

Red winged blackbird flies
straight at me, torpedo with
scarlet epaulettes

Soft Whispers

Days seem infinite
until I hear soft whispers
of my end in me

Woman In Woods

Cell phone, cigarette,
Starbucks coffee - I saw this
woman of the wood

Spooked

Awkward and graceful
all at once, spooked blue heron
lifts off from the marsh

Carpenter in Tree

Wood chips are flying -
pileated woodpecker,
carpenter in tree

Pink Cherry Blossoms

Pink cherry blossoms
have now come and gone - did I
see them or dream them?

Immobile

In muddy river
a great blue heron, ancient,
immobile at dawn

Black River

Cardinal over
the black river makes a shock
something like waking

Right Hip

I slip on the ice,
land on my right hip and see
the world made all new

Print Roosts

Blackbirds in bare oak
shadows of blackbirds on snow -
print roosts then flies

Recesses

In such recesses
of me as I but half know
I invent a life

Dark River

Across dark river
sycamores reach bright white arms,
join against sky’s blue

One White Whisker

Just one white whisker
caught in sun says sleeping cat
is not a gray rock

Sloppy V

Geese in sloppy V -
the settled ease of rich fields
has wrecked discipline

Clocks Buried

Sixtieth birthday -
clocks buried in my cells know
nothing comes easy

Peas

Today’s dawning is
unlike yesterday’s, unlike
as peas in a pod

What I’ll Never

I swim in detail,
what is unaccountable,
what I’ll never say

Fallow

Garden lies fallow,
but underneath is ferment
just what works in me

Heavy Heart

Dad, I watched you pry
boulders from the earth and knew
your heart was heavy

Mute Transmutes

Now clouds cloak the sky
as a mute transmutes horn’s sound,
finds a new beauty

Light’s Insignia

I don’t mean to tell
the whole story, just to show
light’s insignia

Finches

Dozens of finches
in tangled winter bare vine -
all still an instant

Piece Of Cloud

Dog’s a piece of cloud
come down to wander the woods
sniffing for squirrels

Not White

I’d begin again
if I could find alphabet
whose hair was not white

Cherish

I cherish the crows
who lived through West Nile virus -
surviving’s glad, sad

My Creation

My creation is
a dog howling at the moon
which is a deaf pearl

Almost Twenty

Black cat I wait on
demands water fresh and cold -
she’s almost twenty

Fierce Photon Flood

Trees hold their arms up,
children as we are of sky,
the fierce photon flood

Capsules

Contraptions of breath,
these words try to seal my time
into small capsules

Smile

The sun is a smile
in a pale blue winter sky -
its warmth is a kiss

Last Year’s Compost

The garden is black
where I spread last year’s compost -
once and future food

All New

I keep wandering
both in the past and present -
it’s all new to me

Scales

What’s concentrated
can be small and then explode
beyond all scales

Gray Cat Jumps

Gray cat jumps white dog
this rainy winter evening
and heads out the door

Hard As A Pebble

Feeling can be round
and small, hard as a pebble,
ten thousand years smooth

Right There

Every single day,
I start from the beginning
and end up right there

Soft Sunlit

Soft sunlit morning
and the birds that are singing
brighten it further

Rich Beyond

Circle I survey
is small, perhaps just a dot -
still rich beyond me

Faces

Faces of the dead
are so alive inside me,
full of expression

Do I Keep

Do I keep the dead
or do they keep me, each one
an inspiration?

Traveling Still

All places I’ve been
fit easily in my head -
I’m traveling still

Least Exact

What’s least exact, though
most exacting, is how love
enters a heart, leaves

Winter Sky’s Cotton

Winter sky’s cotton,
as far as the eye can see -
bare oaks are pitchforks

Listening For

I’m listening for
what barely announces
it’s coming to be

The Huge Now

What I remember
flowers in the huge now, casts
the spell of its scent

Old Elms

Under those old elms,
I read books - they held sky,
wouldn’t let it fall

Lipless, Not Lifeless

Lipless, not lifeless,
those elms didn’t criticize
but let me read me

Ancient Elms

I couldn’t suspect
ancient elms rooted in me
to outlive themselves

Gray Drizzle - 12-31-2005

After gray drizzle
comes golden sunshine, last day,
unexpected joy

How Loud

I’m surprised how loud
a downy woodpecker is
drumming under clouds

Red Gold

These winter meadows
are red gold with last year’s grass
bent low to the ground

Reddest Berry

The reddest berry
on thorned cane is cardinal
that flies up, away

Drowsy Gold

A warm winter day
the sun is a drowsy gold
willows start to green

Silos

The skunk cabbage tips
come up out of their silos,
point into blue sky

Autumn

In autumn I lose
everyone – leaves falling
from the tree I am

Tawny Winter

Tawny winter fields
under silver rising sun –
white dog and no snow

Patches

White dog patches holes
in my heart even before
I can feel their hurt

Silver Snakeskin

The river at dawn
is silver snakeskin, moving
and still all at once

Bursting

Skunk cabbage bursting-
a green rhinoceros horn-
from winter puddle

Like A Blanket

Silence is on me
the way a blanket of snow
lies on winter woods

Aconite

Winter aconite,
arrowheads of fierce sunshine
piercing the doomed snow

Greta’s Gone

Now that Greta’s gone,
the white dog and the gray cat
lie together, still

In The Ground

Greta’s in the ground,
yet she leaps swift in my head,
meows, as black as coal

First Day Of Winter

First day of winter
whiff of skunk under cream cloud
river dark and slow

Sweet Goal

I dreamt that I scored
a sweet goal in the World Cup
and then I woke up

Freedom’s Scent

My dreams remind me
that I don’t know who I am –
they bear freedom’s scent

Loose Mesh

The loose mesh of mind
catches so much, lets so much
slip through without trace

Solstice Tree

A parrot’s flying
parallel to the ceiling
clinging to the fir

Changing Shape

Aftermath of love
when the dead are mists in mind
changing shape, color

Charcoal

The oaks are charcoal
on cloud as a gray squirrel
dives into ivy

At Haulover Bay, St. John

How could I have guessed
squid could be so seductive?
love’s not deductive

Meerkats

A tiny litter
of meerkats in my office
on a shelf of dreams

Now

I am older now
than I’ve ever been, younger
than I’ll ever be

School On Magnolia

This jade is the last
living remnant of the school
where I taught myself

Wild Rose Tangle

In wild rose tangle
twittering small bird chorus
sings praise of sunlight

Bed

I’ve now put to bed
those who once put me to bed –
their last sheets are earth

Ice Ferns

Now sun starts to thaw
ice ferns from the dark puddles
in this muddy trail

Quaint As Clothing

I’m always naked
in my mind, so ideas
seem quaint as clothing

Rose

Sun in the tangle
of leafless winter trees makes
a delicate rose

Flicker’s Head

Top of flicker’s head
all the way up an oak, red
hammer on blue sky

Last Day

Last day of the year
my stomach aches for the past,
for the future, too.

How Wishes Travel

How wishes travel
down the generations, work
mischief and music

Black Noose

A black noose of coots
surrounds three snow white still swans
winter visitors

First Day - 2007

First day of this year
and I’m the same old me who
keeps slipping away

Mob Of Robins

A mob of robins
on the glistening green grass –
did they never leave?

Pink And Eager

Just whose tongue is this
in my mouth, pink and eager
even when I’m not?

Much Too Much

No declarations
of hope or bright ambition –
I’ve felt much too much

Fallen Jerusalem, BVI

Rounded rock and blue
sea and sky, Jerusalem
Fallen is just this

Tracks

I’m leaving behind
tracks to show I didn’t know
where I was going

Final Shore

I’ve started dreaming
about my parents – they have reached
the far final shore

Not Me

The writer’s not me –
if he starts to think he is,
then he’s lost himself

Fog Pillars

Pillars of fog fill
winter morning woods as I
hike toward the sun

January

This warmest winter
coins January of gold
routs buds from their sleep

Changing Sky

Twenty winters I’ve
stared on these same bare gray oaks
against changing sky

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning, tea
and late oranges, sound of Bach
across seas of time

Deeper Mind

What my senses say
is question and answer both
for my deeper mind

Looking Away

Wisdom of looking
away from what I am, from
changing how of now

Undertake

What I undertake
each day is but prelude to
last undertaking

Spring In Winter, January, 2007

The purple crocus
have now joined the wild parade
of spring in winter

No Confusion

White dog and gray cat
basking in warm winter air
show no confusion

Rain On Slate

The white dog asleep,
rain on the slate roof, gray cat
hiding under porch

Far From Home

In winter sunlight,
the pink orchid’s opening
so far from its home

Far Away

Songs from far away
and long ago, Bahia,
where beauty found me

Blue The Sky

How blue the sky is,
how many times I’ve said this,
how blue this sky is

Color Of Milk

At last it’s turned cold
and the puddles are frozen –
ice color of milk

Sunlight And Shadow

Sunlight and shadow
chase each other through the day
till blood tips the west

Crowds

My mind is a crowd
each one with a crowd inside,
each with a story

One Voice

I’m a crowd, can’t speak
with one voice, but must wander
one voice to the next

Greenest Habit

The greenest habit,
is the greenest habitat,
how mind sings itself

To Gaze At The Moon

I’m turning away
from what I might come to know
to gaze at the moon

Yes

Here is where I am
and here, too, is what I am –
grizzled old fool – yes

Slowing

My brain is slowing
and I ask “Better or worse?”
freedom’s not knowing

Wave After Wave

As seacoasts withstand
wave after wave, so we bear
our deep hopes’ dashing

Lone Point

That one cardinal
is the lone point of color
in winter landscape

Ten Years Past

Ten years past I met
a bald eagle on this branch –
for me he ‘s still here

Snow Drops

Snow drops are blooming
in this strange January
that can’t make one flake

Black Snail

Here’s a small black snail
with convoluted chambers,
its own life of sense

So Quiet

If I could open
the door into white dog’s dream
I’d keep so quiet

Newspaper

Gray cat is asleep
on the newspaper - I can’t
bear to disturb her

No Snow

White tails of brown does,
white of swans, white dog trotting
blue lake’s winter rim

Intricacies

Late afternoon light
intricacies of meeting
half a moon in blue

Black

High in leafless oak
black vase shape of crow, watching
featureless blue sky

Cuneiform

In a sand island
in the stream, cuneiform
imprint of deer hooves

Throwing Books Away

Throwing books away
after a lifetime’s reading –
no print in my heart

Yellow Bloom

Under this gray sky
witch hazel’s in yellow bloom
by the old white oak

New Bridge

Tiny children cross
creek on new fallen oak bridge –
they’re bright with delight

Like Skin

This form’s so simple
I’m almost ashamed of it,
but it fits like skin

Self-Immolation

The monk in the flames
can’t step out to talk to me –
I have to go in

Bright Shooting Stars

Rainbows in the hills
by day and bright shooting stars
above the night wind

My Company

I find myself here -
I’m glad of my company -
two hermits in one

Quiet

Now there’s quiet here –
I don’t know where it’s come from
or how it got here

Next To Nothing

All I can put down
of me is next to nothing –
so I nuzzle it

Escape

Simplest things escape
like moths in silver moonlight –
no calling them back

Dawn’s Red Ribbon

The bare oaks impale
dawn’s red ribbon on their tines,
lift it as it grows

On Mei Yao-ch’en’s “Mourning For My Wife, Three Poems”

A thousand long years
before my birth Mei Yao Ch’en
knew my love and grief

Late Winter

I’m already drunk –
cherry blossom ecstasy
is born in winter

Fox On New Snow

A fox on new snow,
the great big red bushy tail’s
sleek gliding shadow

Phantom

The phantom desire
rules my life and makes me want
what I do not want

Wisps Of Smoke

High up in the sky
migrating geese – wisps of smoke
without a chimney

Snow Storm

From featureless cloud
falling white flapping tatters
become one earth sheet

Sweet

Sweet, babble of doves
late in winter as snow melts
and the snow drops bloom

Blue Pair

A blue pair of jays
in the bare weeping cherry
under charcoal sky

Imagination

Imagination
is a country all its own
where I am not me

Applause of Coots

The applause of coots
taking off from this small lake
that’s still half frozen

A New Peep

Spring light’s suddenness
changes the cardinals’ song –
there

Winter Solstice

Dawn after solstice
first pale pink light tells me sun
has not deserted

Stuck

I am always stuck
between “Hello” and “Goodbye”,
mispronouncing both

Snow News

News of snow can’t reach
the worms in the earth until
it melts and then delves

Afternoon Tea

In a cup of tea
I fall asleep, kept afloat
by a raft of dreams

No Way

No way to retrieve
a flake of snow, not quite like
all the rest, melted

Sudden Now

Now’s always sudden
for here it is, and then not -
whisper of regret

Pearl And Grey

Sky’s a patchwork quilt
of pearl and grey, whose restless
seams are never done

No Hurry

No hurry’s shut up
with the snail in its dark whorl,
slide on slimy foot

Bird

While I am reading
my mind flies away, a bird
seeking its own sky

Like A Wedge

Grief is like a wedge
that waits for sledge’s impact
to split me open

Oak Smoke

The smell of oak smoke
in winter sunlight tells me
I’m alive right now

Unruffled Ocean

The winter sky’s blue
as an unruffled ocean
free of continents

Whisper

Whisper of water
as flames lick a new oak log,
one hour from ashes

Stained Glass

Arms of winter oaks
carve blue sky into a maze
of stained glass windows

Skins Of Night

Grapes with skins of night
hold the fervors of sunlight
of a season past

Vanilla Moon

Setting in the west
vanilla moon’s reclining
on its bright backside

My Worries

All afternoon I
tried to sleep off just the fact
of all my worries

Scholar

I am a scholar
whose subject is ignorance,
my own, massive

Next

I’m next to nothing,
like lace chewed leaf or the frost
that morning will melt

Last Day

I watched the gold sun
set this last day of the year,
half moon at sky’s peak

Do Does

Do does carrying
next spring’s fawns have rough mornings
getting used to it?

Polite

How polite the splash
of small dark ducks taking off
from the blue of lake

New Year’s Eve

This year’s last evening -
when midnight comes we’ll drink just
as time’s drinking us

Memoriam

Sometimes I can read
my parents’ shapes in the clouds,
then wind scatters them

New Year’s Bloom

Next door the yellow
forsythia is blooming
in New Year’s moonlight

Old Hut

Something stirs in me
when I come on this old hut -
did I once live here?

Soft Clouds

Soft clouds floating in
from the west cover the face
of the waxing moon

Manhattan Wander

Manhattan wander
brings every face I’ve known
new before my eyes

Frisco Climb

San Francisco climb
takes me over a hill’s top
to another world

First Location

Cleveland’s sky of soot
keeps ashes before my eyes -
who were my forbears

Inland

Here, inland, right now,
I’ve a longing for the sea
and not a clue why

Meadow Knoll

On that meadow knoll
a lone oak flirts with lightning
that’s branded it once

Covey

White dog lifts covey
of mourning doves twittering
into the soft air

Listening

Listening is hard
and not work at all, no way
to trace how it blooms

Old Stump Cathedral

Old stump cathedral,
green moss spires, a vast dark vault,
insect worshippers

When I’m Not

I’m brushing with light
the facts of my life, so that
I am when I’m not

January Blossoms

This same cherry tree
blossoms each January,
pink flakes with white ones

January Twilight

Pink light slips from lips
of cold blue bottle of day,
as full ice moon climbs

Moon Pitch

From far far away
a full seamless moon curves through
half built hospital

Sudden Snow Squall

A sudden snow squall
last five minutes, then stops, gives way
to blue sky, gold sun

White Ice Full Moon

That white ice full moon
has been waiting forever
for a billiard cue

Fingers Of Cloud

Fingers of cloud stretch
across the sky, but can’t flex
to catch flying geese

Cold Dawn

Each paw a column,
white dog moves like a draft horse,
breathing plumes of steam

Porcupine

My questions are like
the quills of a porcupine,
helpless underneath

Fox’s Footprints

The fox’s footprints
cross the ice on an errand
known only to him

White Dog’s Happy

The white dog’s happy
in the cold with winter wind
roaring through the trees

Moods

In a single day
I travel so many moods
I confuse myself

Map Of Japan

Accidentally,
a crystal map of Japan
in stream’s ice islands

1 Mockingbird

In a world of white
a lone mockingbird unsure
what to sing or how

Fire

What’s the fire thinking
that it whispers so softly
in so many tongues?

Snow Laden

Dark snow laden clouds
are seeping in through the trees,
like smoke without fire

Blizzard

A blizzard wider
than half this continent with
not a single thought

Solitary

In a white snowfield,
a solitary oak, dark
as a lost eyebrow

White Table

On a white table
the white dog and I walk, two
tiny moving dots

Justice

Justice is longing
for simple freedom to be,
bloom without a pose

Salmon

Sunrise of salmon,
flesh of pink boned with bare oaks,
leaping up the sky

Reproachful

Always reproachful
my mother keeps her distance
even in dark death

Wind’s Broom

The sky has gone blue
again swept clean by wind’s broom,
its mindless impulse

Midwinter Peony

Peony’s pink buds,
rockets reaching to streak white
into spring’s blue sky

Strange Coin

Loss enriches me
as it impoverishes -
how strange is life’s coin!

Four Seasons

Past salt and pepper,
my beard has gone white as snow
through all four seasons

First

A crown of blue veins
the first woman I saw die
wore, slumping forward

Lake Ice

As the sun brings warmth,
lake ice begins to mutter
its age old complaint

Forgetting

In forgetting you.
I’ve come to know you better
than I ever dreamed

Sun-Struck

A fly buzzes by
and it and I are both one
and the same, sun-struck

Larger

My dead parents now
have no place to live but me,
larger than I thought

Like Smoke

Grief’s like smoke, writes what
fire has said, then goes to hide
in far-seeing sky

Old Picture

In the old picture,
my dad stands on autumn leaves -
now he’s under them

Snore

Music and sunlight,
Sunday morning stubbornness
of the white dog’s snore

Stirrings

Now, subtlest stirrings
of willow, weeping cherry,
new song in the hedge

Seventeen Year

Now, I’m waiting for
seventeen year cicadas’
weird resurrection

Acquaintance

Death’s an acquaintance
I made only after I
knew life, found I was

Pale Sky

Pale sky, paler blue,
a white moon rising in mist
at the door of night

Still

Will I remember
how I sat at twilight, still,
remembering you?

In The Wind

Spring is in the wind,
impatient, impetuous,
as spring has to be

All New

I remember not
a thing of spring -it’s all new
as it always is

Tongue Of Flame

Just one cardinal
in a bare dun and gold bush
speaks the tongue of flame

Bull Roar

Like some god struggling
to break free, the bull roar
of spring melting ice

Complete Spine

A deer’s complete spine,
hips still attached, is off white
in the melting snow

Taste Of Green

Before the last snow
has fallen, I plant spinach,
dream the taste of green

Spring Missiles

Skunk cabbages, green
tipped, purple horned, are rising
from their dark silos

River

Wind, river of air
that banks on nothing, my lips
twitch to set me free

First

Squirrels haven’t found
two pale purple crocuses,
the first of the spring

Wisps Of Cloud

Wisps of cloud make veils
for the moon’s shining face hung
up high in an oak

One Cardinal

I always wonder
why one cardinal does not
set the woods on fire

Tiny Drab

Such tiny drab birds
have such sweet lavish voices -
I’m non-descript, too

Last Light

Last light of the year -
pink oak trees reach for the sky -
I’m both young and old

Winter Rain

Winter rain, steady
from sky as gray as the hair
that’s left on my head

Sixtieth Year

My sixtieth year’s
around the corner, I wish
I could bend light, see

After The War

Just after the war,
I was born, who knew nothing
of its strife, horrors

Grief Rebuilding

The war became part
of me and each breath I took
was grief rebuilding

Fifty Nine

Fifty-ninth birthday,
walking in snow with white dog
under a gray bowl

Understand Me

Understand me - light
changes instant to instant
and so does seeing

Dry Snow

The dry snow has stopped,
waits for the night wind to come
to shift it, sculpt it

First Star

Quiet of the night
as snow waits for the first star
to slip through the clouds

Black Nose

White dog disappears
into whiteness of the snow,
black nose left behind

All I Say

All I say is said
in passing, some chance remarks
before night takes me

Lapse

What I imagine
I am is less what I am
than my lapse from it

Indecent

All of this odd life
is indecent exposure,
how sun devours me

Young Crow

What a young crow knows
it knows deeper than its bones -
genes make tool making (Nature 13 January 2005 page 121)

White Antlered

The stain of shadow
on the smooth surface of snow -
oaks, high, white antlered

Still On Snow

White dog barks the bark
she saves just for foxes, barks
and is still on snow

All Love’s Lie

A cemetery
is what I am, place of rest,
where all love’s lies sleep

Frisbee Of Ice

A frisbee of ice
has formed in dog’s water dish -
I send it flying

Older

I’m getting older
day by day and all I know
is still not knowing

Deft Death

Deft death, Dad, unstitched
your shadow from your heels, brought
it to live with me

Escape

I’d like to escape
my own form, my only form,
flit from my own fit

As Alive

You are as alive
for me now as when you lived,
maybe less reserved

North Wind

Tips of the bare oaks
finger a powder blue sky
as the north wind blows

As Flu Flies

Oceans away ducks
are incubating our fate
as a fierce flu flies

Swan

Suddenly a swan
is what you were the first time
all those snows ago

Midwinter

The sun is liquid
in midwinter - I drink gold
from a snowy cup

Dead Fox

Dead fox on the path
down by the lake - reddish brown,
small, precise and still

Eleven Bluebirds

Eleven bluebirds
perched in sunshine by the lake
while ice melts, mutters

Blue Early

Blue early spring sky
makes the world a robin’s egg,
just waiting to crack

Echoes

Downy woodpecker
finds such different echoes
in just one dead limb

Woods

Woods make me happy -
I have no idea how
and that’s part of it

Creekside Sycamore

Creekside sycamore -
old Iseult of the white hands’
got nothing on you

NYC

New York, where I went
fifty seven years ago
to board my first ship

Bluebird

Bluebird over snow
with a red blush on his chest -
spring’s not far away

Shadow Barred

White dog in fresh snow,
her face shadow barred as she
trots through bare thickets

My Fatigue

More birdsong, more light -
intimations of fatigue
under white eyebrows

Unlike

I’m wondering why
why do I bother to speak,
quite unlike the pond?

Sudden Weakness

A sudden weakness
overcomes me as I start
to remember when...

This One Window

I’ve been looking out
this one window so long I
see through what I see

Here!

I am what I am,
only this, so lonely, too,
broken open - here!

Cell Phone

Rachel, in the woods
cell phone let me talk with you,
brightened the birdsong

Litowa, Tanzania

There in Litowa,
what made me so feverish
I knew I could die?

Simple Things

These things were simple
until I got to live them -
love, birth, death and hope

Winter 2007

First dawn of winter –
pale blue sky with rose margin –
a few mourning doves

Lost

Shadows in sunshine
all of those whom I have lost
shadows in sunshine

Blue Jay

Blue jay in the fog
as if the sky had escaped
from captivity

In Fog

Every water bird
in fog seems a part of dream
and the white dog, too

Coots

White dog disperses
coots – thunderous the applause
of rising lobed toes

Mapping

I’ve wandered so much
I’ve lost hope of mapping where
I’ve been, where I am

Dream Sea

I’m sleepy and want
to drift down into dream sea
to become a fish

Like Thirst

Sun slakes appetite
like thirst after grey days
and changes my mind

Where?

Do I hold my grief
or does my grief carry me?
Where are we going?

Squawking

Hidden in the mist
myriad geese are squawking –
then the beat of wings

Great Blue

Great blue heron makes
the ugliest squawk as he
launches into fog

Fifteen

I’m trying to guess
what’s the meaning of all this –
I’m fifteen again

Coiled

Red buds on green canes
of wild roses in winter –
spring is coiled to spring

Look Out

What I see when I
look out my windows depends
on what is inside

Think Less

I want to think less
but shadows are suggestive
even in half light

Oak Smoke

The smell of oak smoke
under a gray wintry sky –
I am burning, too

My Forest

Contradictions are
the pillars, beams of my house,
wood of my forest

Bowl Games

New Year’s Day football
at once leashes, unleashes
the savage in me

Finishing

Finishing a year,
starting anew - just the work
done by an instant

Arrowheads

Shot from morning’s bow,
arrowheads of geese over
the crest of the hill

A Black Stick

White dog wades river,
finds a black stick to chew on,
declares happiness

Murmuring

Murmuring burning
our old oak in the fireplace
gives tongues to lost years

Watching

I learned by watching
I could not say what I saw
but it became me

Witless

What’s witless wanders,
what has wits wonders – and these
two come together

Not Imitation

Not imitation,
but another dimension,
like silence fiction

Cold Far

The moon never speaks –
cold far mirror sees nothing –
I can’t stop dreaming

Sieck

The wholesale florist
is next door to the prison –
scents escape with ease

Lush

As evening comes down
I’m living in a lush hush –
a star shoots at me

Another Season

Another season’s
sun shines today, as if the spring
simply couldn’t wait

Deer

A line of white tails
quivering with each quick bound
across the black stream

Pebbles

Pebbles in the stream
become smoothed without knowing
anything at all

On The Wire

Squirrel on the wire
pauses to sniff snowy air,
then goes on crossing

Faster

My old friend’s dying
as I am too, only he’s
quicker than I am

Just This Once

Man is the flower
who blooms thinking, “Just this once
and never again”

Old Eyes

Old eyes, new wonder –
ducks dozing on the harbor
in January

Sex

Sex invented us,
not the other way around –
but we make it new

Skirts Of Ice

Rocks in skirts of ice
sit like Buddha in the lake
under winter sun

Artifact

Art is artifact,
unless it is fact, just as
rock is rock, sky, sky

Temples

Rotting in the ground,
my parents are preserved now
between my temples

My Parents

I mourn my parents
in each breath that fans the fire
of my extinction

Gray Rainy

Like gray rainy days
fatigue steals something away –
the inner sunlight

Mind’s Eye

Midwinter mind’s eye
sees the weeping cherry tree
in full pink blossom

Bursts Of Breath

The world in my mind
will die with me, save it live
in these bursts of breath

Waking

When the wake is gone,
then the vessel disappears –
ocean’s all that’s left

Dark Coots

Thousands of dark coots
still as print on the blue page
of this winter lake

Featureless

A featureless day
a gray sky in a gray mood –
purr, question mark cat

Sudden

Just before leap day
sudden scent of spring in the air –
I’m trying to bud

Each New day

Older each new day
my puzzlement is deeper,
light as a feather

Sly

Nothing to relate
save for the sly happenstance
of formless moments

Foggy Days

Understanding was
the great passion of my youth –
now I’m one with fog

Dead Wood

The wind goes howling
through the almost waking oaks
so dead wood spears fly

Alonzo King

I watch the dancers
and want to live twenty times,
no, ninety more times

Catapult

Warm day catapults
the first plum trees into bloom –
life and death, again

One More

It keeps happening –
I’m becoming someone else,
one more impostor

Love

I’m pursuing you
through all your hills and valleys
and I am tiny

Tree Frogs

Tree frogs are piping
before St. Patrick’s own day,
quite drunk on spring green

This Side

This side of sixty
early spring’s more delicate,
red buds, ravishing

Coming, Going

Each day’s one less day,
each new day is one more day –
I’m coming, going

Sheen Of Pearl

I can own nothing
and nothing can possess me –
sky the sheen of pearl

Old Ohio Barn

Old barn – blue sky slats
mixed in among the gray. as
sky mixes with mine

Yola, April 5, 2007

Naked as a child
I go to April graveyard –
snow falls in Cleveland

Over It

I’m over it &
what I’m over is myself,
tiny as zerO

Lake Erie

Lake Erie in spring
a slate gray on which I wrote
my first history

In Puzzlement

Places of my youth
stand in puzzlement, wonder
just who I might be

Few Simple

A few simple things,
but what are they: can I count
them on my fingers?

My Puzzlement

When I meet myself
my puzzlement increases
but is sweetened, too

Piece Of Dead Fox

In her mouth white dog
holds a large piece of dead fox,
smiling as she does

Black Type

The coots are black type
scattered on the windy lake,
bobbing with the waves

Just Before

The beaver left off
just before the tree toppled –
what distracted her?

Joy’s Mist

The press of blind days
that don’t know where they’re going,
soft kiss of joy’s mist

Slippery Now

I’ve no occasion
except for slippery now
that I just can’t grab

Groaning

White dog is groaning
with desire, hope, pleasure
all mixed together

Snow

There’s snow on my cheek,
but I can not ski down it,
since I’m the mountain

Cherry Dance

Weeping cherry’s dance
in the breeze is more complex
than any cloth skirt’s

Cleveland, April 2007

I miss my parents
in how I forget myself
and see only cloud

Company Of Stones

I’m bereaved when I
leave the cemetery and
company of stones

Flowers, Too

Words are flowers, too
I can arrange them only
as they bloom in me

Wafers

Wafers of blue sky
sandwiched in between cloud sheep
that have no shepherd

Strange Spring

Plum petals and snow
mix in gusts of April wind –
this is a strange spring

Lost In A Cold Spring

Lost in a cold spring,
the fruit trees can’t help blooming,
blush on a gray sky

Dripping

Dripping vanilla
down from the sky, the locusts
once more in sweet bloom

Free

Golden coins scattered
through lush May green by the creek –
yellow swamp iris

Slant Bough

Dying oak’s slant bough
crosses where the raccoons live
on its way to sky

Lost Ash

Fallen mountain ash
in autumn snow, its berries
red as drops of blood

Canes In Bloom

Can these white flowers
bear the succulent rapture
of red raspberries?

GW’s Death, May 22, 2007

White lotus petals
floating down echo snow in
the cemetery

Swampo

Bull frogs discussing
mysterious policies –
swampo profundo

Rabbit Paradise

Clover lifts its head,
white as snow, so much sweeter,
rabbit paradise

June 7, 2007

Now dryad’s saddles
are black and shriveled, worn out
riding moonlit nights

Park Heights Avenue

Field of winter wheat,
sable, at Park Heights, where crows
and black hats commune

Swift As Sunlight

Through tight loops of vine
a pair of goldfinches dart
as swift as sunlight

Past Harvard

Vanity is truth –
this goes past Harvard’s motto
to self-disclosure

Pink

Pink the new peak leaves
of these young oaks reaching to
touch my ancient chin

Ghost Tongue

Ghosts in river mist
discuss what was, what will be,
till sun steals their tongue

Winked

Morning wilderness
borders on the land of dreams –
a star winked at me

Fact/Fiction

A matter of fact
is a matter of fiction –
so spring is my dream

Afloat

Clock chimes the hour –
I don’t count, knowing only
that now stays afloat

Bothered Beaver

The bothered beaver
strikes the lake’s bass drum and dives
to white dog’s surprise

Pink Haze

Weeping cherry’s bloom
makes a pink haze on blue sky –
this grief’s delicate

Exquisite

The exquisite scent
of a blossom I don’t know –
would a name spoil it?

Lone Goose

Lone goose, white bellied,
under white clouds, streaking west,
squawking all the way

5 Hawks

5 hawks circling light
at Cross Campus and Osler –
what prey do they see?

Green Eyes

One green eye in sun
and one green eye in shadow –
question mark cat sleeps

Flashed

A blue jay flashed through
the weeping cherry’s pink veil –
that was yesterday SF, April, 2008

More Like

Now I look more like
my father than like myself –
who was he am I?

Lovely Ugly

Lovely ugly croak
of a heron taking flight –
is mine different?

SF, 9 April, 2008

Cranes wait by the bay –
the Olympic torch is lost –
Everest stands still

A Streetcar

A streetcar renamed
lack of desire, how aging
brings want of wanting

Yellow Rimmed Eye

Small black bird, yellow
rimmed eye, tends a puddle where
cherry blossoms float

Mix

Fatigue and sorrow
mix with sixty year olds’ joys –
I’m past purity

Heat Wave, Point Reyes, April 12, 2008

Resplendent in warmth,
blue ocean, barely rolling -
ease, immensity

Scattered

Wild iris scattered
throughout seaside cow pastures –
specks of majesty

Stain

Bird against blue, hawk
keeps its shadow on a string,
stains green grass with ink

Tomales Bay

Now the setting sun
casts the bay as silver plate –
breeze rustles the trees

Hills

Hills climb to the sky,
drop to their knees by the sea,
hold millenia

Lowing

Black cattle lowing
on the hill confide in breeze
blowing from the sea

Quail

Four dusky quail walk
a dusty cow path – red winged
blackbirds sing in reeds

Crows

What crows have to say,
they speak in the squawkative,
the case that’s their own

No Rush

California
poppies, little cups of gold
in no rush at all

Coming Death

Close friend’s coming death
tells me the wind holds mine, too –
even the moonlight

My Death’s Horse

I am my death’s horse –
it rides me over the hills
to canter the beach

Pearls

I’m trying to find
pearls in nightmare – what rubs there
makes all things precious

Foil

I hadn’t noticed
eucalyptus leaves glisten
in seaside sun, breeze

Hush

Hush of afternoon –
I’m coming back to myself,
whom I barely know

Dragonfly

I fell asleep in
the tent of infinite dreams –
I’m a dragonfly

Free Turkey

Blue of gobbler’s face,
brown splendor of his ruffed tail –
turkey struts his stuff

Spring Hail, Seattle

Spring hail beats leaf drums –
sunshine yellow skunk cabbage
glows up from the ground

4:20 AM

I wake from my dream
to the first halting birdsong –
miracle’s music

Warbler

Warbler singing high
in a tree – dinosaur, how
did it come to this?

Wind Combs

Wind combs wildflowers
on the hill’s spine by the sea –
if my hair could bloom... Point Reyes

Tamales Point

This spring spectacle –
millions of bright flower eyes –
every year, just now Point Reyes

Bolinas Lagoon

Black seals on a bar
flop about, enjoying spring
just the way I do

Twin Towers

Twin yellow pockmarked
morel towers – how eagerly
my eyes pick them out

May 11, 2008

When the sun comes out
I’m another me, someone
woken by the light

Tree Peony

The tree peony
sheds white petals like a tent
going to pieces

Dream - RAR, March 10, 2008

I swam to the side
of a dying friend, dripping
as we were at birth

Not Prepared

I was not prepared
for anything that transpired –
this, my life’s glory

On Black Lake

White swans on black lake,
white dogwoods blooming on shore,
white dog by my side

Never Been

Darkest miracle
is death, the return to where
we have never been

Gold Drop

I am very small
and getting smaller with each
gold drop of a day

After Hail

Sunshine after hail,
clouds true to no fixed purpose,
unsettled as mind

Buck A,K.

Did the buck that slammed
into your car mark you then
for an early death?

Whir

Cardinal’s wings’ whir
as scarlet bursts from a clump
of gold swamp iris

Close and Far

I am an old man
who once was young, memory
close and far as dream

Stir

The stir of the breeze
in the May green of the trees
as light keeps changing

Old Apple

Blue jay in the breeze
lights in the old apple tree,
stays a single beat

Wine Of Joy

In the wine of joy,
is the flavor of sorrow
and yet we drink it

Lip Of June

On the lip of June
this forest is enchanted –
a faun sleeps in grass

You

You, white, naked, new –
here are the snows of this year
which will melt in time

Pest

I’m trying to know
much less than I did before -
ambition’s a pest

Wonder Of Now

The wonder of now
is that it is always here
so I’m not alone

Dog Daze

The hammer of heat
comes crashing down before noon –
dog inhabits daze

Wordwork

I’m a wordworker
or is it that words work me,
take me for their wood?

Death Fruits

Death’s everywhere
and then fruits like a fungus
from the underground

Basil

In the heat, basil
plants pop up, tiny green spades -
I taste what they’ll be

Bones

Up the wild cherry
has the wisteria climbed,
lacking its own bones

Savors

White dog savors taste
of the very first black cap –
next come mulberries

Undertaking

Strange undertaking –
we sail out to meet our deaths
under bright blue sky

Black Cohosh

Phosphorescent white,
witches’ candles now ignite
rise up from the green

Tangles

My thoughts walk with me
impersonate the tangles
of the climbing vines

June 11, 1977

That grief can sweeten
over vast stretches of time
is bitter wonder

Between Sets

Silence in the swamp
as the frogs rest between sets –
then a sudden twang

Goldfinches

Two small spots of gold
sit up in a tree, feasting
on ripe mulberries

Swallowtail

Yellow sunlight flaps
its wings – swallowtail crosses
creek from which deer drink

Late June Afternoon

White dog’s fast asleep -
rumble of distant thunder
competes with her snore

Sour Cherries For Pie

Red as winter coals,
but smooth and safe to the touch,
picked from their green orbs

With Myanmar, September 7

Miniature monk,
a tiny praying mantis
amid basil’s green

Quite Who

I never forget
who I am, since I’ve never
known who I might be

So Stealthy

Beautiful dry day
after beautiful dry day –
so stealthy this drought

A.K., September 24, 2007

We keep you in mind
as if searching for the plans
to build you again

Up Early, Worried

Up early, worried,
I feel the dread in the flesh
that is life itself

Gunshots

Acorns are falling
with the report of gunshots
on slate roof and deck

Drink

Autumn woodland fog
passes through the spiders’ webs,
leaves fresh drink behind

Eruption

V’s of geese erupt
from dense banks of autumn fog
scream upwards and off

Time Reduces

Time reduces me
to something like an essence
but still not quite me

Slipping Through

I keep slipping through
the noose of my own knowing
so I stay alive

The Sky’s Flag

In dry October
the blue jay flies the sky’s flag,
darts through falling leaves

Windows

Windows in the woods
start to open as leaves fall –
I see sky patches

To Write

In order to write,
I step back from what I see
to find it again

New Surface

The act of writing
turns me inside out – how strange
this new surface is

Tired

I’m tired of me,
something sweet in this fatigue,
with a hint of rot

None?

I’m shell within shell –
which one is the innermost –
or might there be none?

Poised

October’s still green
but summer’s fever has calmed –
the paintbrush is poised

Autumn

While I still can see
I record the mysteries
I can’t comprehend

Dog And Doubts

Soft October night
I take my dog and my doubts
for a long slow walk

Dawn Mist

Dawn mist hugs the ground,
fills the hollows of the land –
a deer’s head floats by

Smoke Rises

The way smoke rises –
so words should go up to join
the sky of silence

Wonder

Am I a wonder
only insofar as I
can’t help wondering?

Warm

Warm October night,
with the cicadas singing
amid painted leaves

Ghosts

Moonlit heartless night –
leaves fall from trees, flutter down –
ghosts of butterflies

Right Name

Separation grief,
that’s the right name, the one I
whisper to myself

Autumn Sleep

White dog’s fast asleep,
unaware two brown leaves have
landed in her snow

Jungle

I wish I had names
for the plants that grow and make
jungle inside me

Warm

Warm October night
won’t let summer go, even
if summer is gone

Toothache

Toothache in the rain
the cold of autumn is here
I’ve no place to hide

Underneath

In autumn downpour,
gray question mark cat hunts mice
underneath the house

Splashes

After days of rain
splashes of sunshine break through
huge pearl clouds, thinning

Old Stumps

Old black stumps rot out
into cities, whose skylines
are slick and jagged

Golden Sheet

The sun’s golden sheet
unrolls over rainbow woods
as breeze launches leaves

Drowned

Five white tailed deer drowned
in a swimming pool - how strange
is animal fate

Stevenson Bison

Last year bison jumped
the net on a tennis court –
victory gesture?

Slalom

A single red leaf
slaloms down October breeze,
doesn’t miss a gate

Death

When I think of death,
my thinking is not thinking,
but the truth of fear

Cold, Toothache

I wake up in despair
with a cold and a toothache –
is this all it takes?

Commonplace

Today’s commonplace
was born in a world lost past
all imagining

Myself Ticking

Wherever I go,
I carry time inside me,
hear myself ticking

Planet

Were I a planet
my regrets would run as deep
as veins of silver

Remembering

I’m remembering
November, when, like a leaf,
you fell and were still

Tree Of Life

How slender the stem
that holds me to the tree, life,
whose trunk is this air

Elk

I still hear the elk
bugling on the mountainside
twenty-five years ago

Stink

Stink of a dead buck,
decomposing, a youngster
by the river’s edge

Search

Year after bright year
I watch the leaves slanting down,
search the wind for words

Insect Truth

Butterflies are gone,
but the mosquitoes remain –
a sad insect truth

Amber

The amber of tea
first traps all my reflections,
then lets me drink them

Simple Parts

Mother and father
are simple parts of the earth,
yet walk in my mind

Not Just

Not just in shadow
but in the very light that
makes me burn is death

Dying Oak, Autumn

Slant of dying oak
covered in ivy amid
the surrounding gold

Expert

Autumn is expert
in dyeing dying’s colors,
how wonder weaves woods

Up And Down

I go up and down,
thinking sometimes that I am,
sometimes that I’m not

Eons

I dream of eons,
yet come back to instants,
the talk of my tick

Dragon

The dragon of hope
breaths flame and singes flowers,
burns us all to ash

What?

Wind, weather change how
I hold myself in my hands
in my head in...what?

Words

Words use me as I
presume to use them for earth,
air, fire and water

Inner Ear

Happiness of ear
trying to listen within
for an inner wind

Wordless Color

The wordless color
of these woods in autumn, fresh
even as I age

Empty

In empty moments,
memory lassoes me, drags
me from where I stand

Sunlight

Sunlight that made me
transforms an autumn morning –
a deer disappears

Saffron

Red threads of saffron
I have plucked from the crocus -
how they’ll yellow rice!

Obscure

How obscure I am –
each chance of intersection
finds me newly skew

Lacquered Reds

The autumn woods glow
lacquered reds and golds in rain –
soon they’ll be bare bone

Way Station

A red leaf lands now
on a lower branch, breaking
its journey to ground

Intricacy

Who can imagine
intricacy of what is
beyond strutting science?

I Wait

I’ve planted tulips –
now I wait for mystery
to explode in spring

Pendulum

A leaf’s suspended
by a spider’s thread and so
makes a pendulum

Fine Gold

On fine gold carpets
I walk mile upon sweet mile –
such is autumn’s wealth

Still

When I was little
I walked the woods in a book
now I walk them still

Crows

Raucous cries – a mob
of crows in the pin oak tree –
are these football fans?

Like Rubies

Glowing like rubies,
the fall crop of raspberries –
the white dog grabs one

Wordless Balm

What I see goes far
past what I can say – beauty
is a wordless balm

Phantom

How can I follow
the promptings of my nature,
which but half exists?

November 18, 2007

The weeping cherry
has put on its yellow robe
prelude to the nude

Playbook

I’m dreaming reasons
for my puzzling existence –
x’s and zeroes

Raw End

This bone chilling cold,
the raw end of November,
sun a ghost in grey

Convention

I’m a convention,
those inside me so diverse,
I never agree

This Fog

Talking to myself,
I can rarely find clear words,
so I speak this fog

Splendors

It’s a simple thing –
happiness coins such splendors
as surpass dreaming

Of That Doe

Beauty of that doe,
young, slight, alert, stays with me
in me for days, weeks

Lush

Lush warm night comes down
on leaves of many colors -
holly has white blooms

Poaching

The poaching of pears –
the white dog is fast asleep
as Thanksgiving comes

Print

Print of each instant
is distinct as a finger’s
in the dust I am

Whisper

The whisper of hope
that something can yet be born
inside my own ache

Near Shore

Deer bound for the woods,
beaver scrambles for water
as white dog closes

Signature

On warm autumn air
a soft signature of skunk
almost beautiful

Red Berries

Eating bittersweet
berries as red as itself
lone fall cardinal

Parenthesis

Each parenthesis
is nest for a mystery,
as I am, (myself)

A. K.

In dream came A. K.,
said she had spliced time so she
could be still alive

Memory

Memory fights death,
then slowly concedes, recedes
to join what it fought

Lost Gold

The weeping cherry
is newly nude, its lost gold
strewn over the ground

Waked

Fall of baked brown leaf
makes such a slant in my mind
I feel newly waked

Mulch

Mulch for what comes next,
each leaf was once a story –
I drop from my branch

Rudderless

Ruddy fade of day
into wide rudderless night –
how my mind careens

Here Here

I don’t go back where
I came from – there’s no there there,
barely a here here

Bronze Red Hands

Large as bronze red hands,
leaves of the pin oak can’t grasp
the wind that flaps them

Lost Worlds

Sorrow makes me tired
as if I had to carry
the bones of lost worlds

So Blue

Now the sky’s so blue
it is hard to imagine
any other sky

Shy

Wisdom hides nothing,
is drab not from modesty,
but just to be free

My Waking

More than I sing it –
so much more – sunlight sings me,
gives me my waking

Furnace

Inverted blue bowl
of late fall sky – my breath steams
from furnace I am

Red And Blue

Crossing suddenly
so close - blue jay, cardinal –
the red and the blue

No Eyes

Wind choreographs
dance it has no eyes to see,
ballet of the leaves

Stuff

We’re in love with stuff,
so that ourselves we do stuff,
so we turn into stuff

Long Sunny

In trees’ company
I wend a long sunny way,
doubting my sorrows

Autumnal

This autumnal ache,
that the chain of tomorrows
must soon be broken

Jaunty

In the year’s first snow,
burl head wears a cap of white,
really quite jaunty

I Don’t Rule

I float on the cells
of an empire I don’t rule –
I dread its collapse

Leaves, Suddenly

Leaves suddenly yield
a stick which becomes a snake
beige and beady eyed

Lightning Fingers

Mother in my dreams
you’re thunder on the piano
with lightning fingers

Nature

Nature knows nothing,
is wiser than all knowing –
how empty why is

Same Windows

These last two decades
I’ve looked out these same windows
as my vision changed

Ebbing

Drizzle, darkness, fog,
another year is ebbing
as the white dog snores

Bewildered

I’m still bewildered,
most of all by simple things –
am I possible?

Before

White dog and white swans
on a leaden autumn day
before the rain falls

Beloved

Beloved old house,
almost in ruins, just like
my own childhood

Mine

Listening to dreams,
I hear a thousand voices
I could take for mine

Shaft

I mine what is mine,
although the risks are so great
the shaft will collapse

Laboratory

Laboratory,
each instant experiment –
this is how I am

Wondering

I keep wondering
why is it I’m wondering –
there is no answer

Less

I know less and less,
but can’t quite get to nothing
which holds all there is

A Thread

A thread so slight, how
it meets fingertips is right
at illusion’s edge

Small

How render the truth
of what’s vanishingly small,
of my own estate?

Splash

I’m diving into
the infinitesimal –
I don’t make a splash

Mind

How strange the mind is,
for it goes a thousand roads
and holds a million

Twilight

Twilight is oak strokes
of different dark barked inks,
no trace of the pen

Habits

Only my habits
know how frightened I am – I
trust them not to tell

Night

When the night comes down
the day gone by starts to glow
like stars with questions

Shortest

Year’s shortest day –
moon is a pale wafer caught
in slim oak fingers

Blue Nettle Berries

Blue nettle berries
in the tangle by the stream
this first day of fall

Warming

This year mosquitoes
are everywhere - soon we’ll have
malaria back

Time Passes

“Time passes,” I wrote,
“when I am gone from myself”
what can I have meant?

Huge Orange Seeds

Huge orange seeds lilies
of the valley make bob like
balls on a fool’s cap

Tentative

Decades of writing,
always tentative, always
beginning over

Secret Root

I’ve been all my life
a secret root in the earth
starving for the light

Hibbing

Hibbing, mine tailings
in Lake Superior, and
then the Dylan fish

So Dusky Blue

Great blue heron lifts
so dusky blue that it seems
evening’s taking flight

Honking In Fog

Geese honking in fog
wake me from my reverie,
say life’s urgent, now

Bulk

As baleen whales strain
plankton, I swim through details
becoming immense

No Way Out

There is no way out
of whatever I’m in, but
through and then I’m through

Dark Bones

Snow-blossomed in spring,
dogwood turns blood red in fall,
then bares its dark bones

Earth’s Library

The earth’s library
is full of the bones of those
I’ve loved, great books’ spines

Leaf Strewn Lawn

Across leaf strewn lawn
squirrels play tag and white dog
quivers to join in

Gleaming

Through sixty autumns
I reach back to grab buckeyes
gleaming in sunshine

Ordinary

The ordinary,
that is where mystery lives,
in these sodden leaves

Tongue Without

The whisper of oak
burning in the fireplace, tongue
without any words

Navel

A thimble of flesh,
navel goes with me, reminds
me what thread bore me

Artillery

Report of acorns
on slate roofs - artillery
of oaks in action

Drum Voice

A drum has a voice,
hollowness speaking, even
as I do, same air

Cloud Dulled

Autumn leaves rustle
in rainy wind - the moon’s night’s
Cyclops eye, cloud dulled

Armless

A falling leaf scoops
back and forth, back and forth, hand
armless in the air

Tunneling 1

My mind’s not my own,
half belongs to the surround
that gives it its tasks

Tunneling 2

In the gloom are clues
for leaps of quick ecstasy,
but no mind-footing

Their Roots Refuse

Trees sway back and forth
beginning all the dances
that their roots refuse

Mouse Mates

The mouse attracts mates
with a substance in its tears -
how wise the mouse is

Fall Birdwatcher

The fall birdwatcher
is back now for the tenth year -
he’s a rare bird, too

Hickory Nuts

Green as tennis balls
hickory nuts fall from trees,
land with a racket

Unsettled Country

Imagination
always unsettled country
which is where I live

Fantasy’s Rib

For no one’s pleasure,
gourds have found shapes that have sprung
from fantasy’s rib

Cool Night

In the afternoon,
bronzed praying mantis and then
cool night with hard stars

A Second Skin

Shame’s a second skin
that glitters ominously
and then becomes flame

Sharp White Bite

Middle autumn cool
lets my flesh recall the small
white teeth of winter

Sheen Lines

In the sky, sheen lines
of differing light in grays
over green soaked fields

Most Hidden

What’s most hidden lies
out in the open - habit
blanks wonder’s vision

Green Grass Raft

Four paws to the sky
the white dog shifts in her sleep,
floats on fall grass raft

Heavy Shopping Bags

Woman with heavy
shopping bags smiles at a duck
bobbing on Jones Falls

Fall Migration

How many sorrows
can perch on a branch of mind
and then fly away?

What’s Left

What’s left of morning
when white dog and I walked woods
song and color filled?

White Dog’s Tail

In the white dog’s tail,
oak leaves wag when she sees me -
an enchanted bough

Rainbow Chicago

Foot of a rainbow
over Lake Michigan, hard
rain in Chicago

Shoreland

How red the maples
against Lake Michigan’s blue
out Shoreland’s windows

Smell, Subterfuge

Each city is an
encyclopedia, rich
in subterfuge, smell

El

The el, anything
but elegant, yellow steel
holding trains’ rumbles

My 60th

Sixtieth autumn -
a cloudy October day
quiets all colors

Dead Relatives

So you’ve come to live
in me, all of you - I wish
I’d known you were me

Deep Analogy

A small form requires
not only compression but
deep analogy

Bottle Of Ink

A bottle of ink
is what night is to me - I
dip myself in it

Blackbirds High

Blackbirds high in oaks,
compositor’s drawer can’t
hold them anymore

Memory Lies

Memory lies, then
finds its lies are true, despairs
of any escape

Demiurge

Soup is a river
that’s run through my life, through me,
warming demiurge

Mandelstam 7

Beauty’s a bright child
playing at tragedy’s knee -
unbearable sight

Just A Sip

I take just a sip
of Osip - I’m lost, drunk on
a hopeless beauty

Your Gaze

Dad, your gaze, gentle
inquisition, holds me now -
I see it in dreams

Wild Garlic

Gray question mark cat,
asleep by a cliff of white
blooming wild garlic

Cell Phone

Mistaking cell phone
in my hand for a treat, horse
knocked me over - yes

Adversity

I became myself
in adversity’s prison,
adversity’s prism

Sun’s Favor

Autumn woods put on
a coat of many colors
mark of sun’s favor

Freshman Year

Wooden animals
my father made my daughter -
still here now she’s left

Sumptuous

Sumptuous autumn
rises from the dawn’s pale blue -
into this you died

Flotillas

On the still lake now
flotillas of geese and ducks,
leaves that have no wings

White, Pink, Black

The white dog’s pink tongue
lolls out under her black nose
as she pads along

Already

I’m getting ready
for what’s already happened
long autumns ago

Tomorrow’s Wind

The weeping cherry
is going orange - tomorrow’s
wind will strip it bare

Purple In Autumn

I’ve picked red saffron
from the crocus sativa,
purple in autumn

Golden Branch

Phantom life pain is
mind haunted by what’s long gone,
golden branch of me

Patches Of Blue

Patches of blue start
to show through the forest’s roof -
fall prepares winter

Yet Quite New

The things that I say
have been a lifetime in me
and are yet quite new

Alone With

The provinces where
I’m alone with my mind are
the ones I prefer

Lost And Found

I am most myself
when my attention wanders
to be lost and found

Old One Now

I’m the old one now
and yet I’ve traveled only
such a short distance

Deeper Mine

The gold of fools is
everywhere - what’s rare is twist
to find deeper mine

Wonder

High in the mountains
I walked in wonder at how
they and I got there

Never Quite Know

My love for the light,
for how eyes investigate
and never quite know...

Blinds

The Venetian blinds
stripe light and shadow across
the wood of my mind

In A Chair

I sit in a chair
and listen - my mind wanders,
won’t come back to me

Death’s

Death’s starting to come
to collect my friends, I’d just
as soon keep them, me

Soft Shadow

In a moonlit night
I move with a soft shadow
down towards the sea

Rattle

Moon in torn linen
and the wind out of the north,
rattle of dry leaves

On A Hanger

The cadaver held
his skin on a hanger -
could not take a step

Cadaver In Heels

In high heels, shopping
bag in hand, she looked chic dead -
no worries at all

Next Of Kin

When you crumbled earth,
you questioned it tenderly
as your next of kin

River Moment

White dog drinks, rippling
reflections of sycamores
as their leaves fall up

Rack

Each bare sycamore’s
a magnificent rack, horn
erupting from earth

Middle November

You lay comatose
brilliant day after brilliant day
as I felt for you

Apples

Apples of the air -
that’s what poems are - pommes d’air,
not gold, not silver

Shira

Shira, you are what
your name means, poetry, song
all in a white dog

Memory’s Ready

Memory’s ready
to devour tomorrow, just as
it has yesterday

Hope’s Beginning

How did hope begin,
given that it torments me
each and every day?

Crows

West Nile virus killed
so many, half this flock’s widowed -
caw and remember

Nude Oaks

Nude oaks on blue sky,
two ducks in flight, clarity
of cold morning air

Not This Rock

What is adamant,
not this rock, but formless flux
that can not be still

Kingfisher’s Chi-chi

Kingfisher’s chi-chi,
blue burst of its underwings
as it flies upstream

Beginning Under

Decades of writing,
always tentative, always
beginning under

Ecstasy

The scent of oak smoke -
ecstasy in this cold air -
as I fetch more logs

Who Says

Pansies still blooming
in cold want to know who says
pansies are pansies?

So Many People

So many people,
so much loneliness - can it
be the two are one?

After Thanksgiving

After Thanksgiving
dandelions are blooming
studding grass with suns

Six Of Them

Redheaded flickers
six of them on just one log -
bright blue jays fly by

Hudson, December 3, 2005

The sleeping Hudson
starts to blue in the first light
of December dawn

Old Coffee Warehouse

Even in winter
lost coffee warehouse smells haunt
white Lincoln Center

Out Gray Window

Paris winter rain -
lost little boy looking out
gray window and in

Hard To Know

What was hard to know
can become quite suddenly
easy to say, play

Small Prints

This snow is silence -
the words I speak make small prints
twisting through the pines

No Way

No way to record
how hours slip through my fingers -
but you know yourself

Tiny Bird

From that tiny bird
comes a huge song - so it is,
exactly, with us

Thin Ice Skin

Like a snake, the creek
is shedding its thin ice skin,
slithering through bends

Quizzical

White dog in white snow,
visible but quizzical,
she’s almost not there

Cat Asleep

I slept in the sun,
woke to find day almost done,
cat asleep on me

A Few Lights

A few colored lights,
next to nothing, stand for hope
as the days shorten

Clay Trees

The clay trees I made
years ago still have not put
out any green leaves

Rescue

Time to wind the clock,
though pendulum’s still swinging -
time to rescue time

Beyond Trapeze

Each moment’s letting
go, taking hold, art beyond
the trapeze artist’s

Inside The House

Inside the house I’ve
come to write inside myself,
where I dwell...and how

Orange Pendulum

That orange pendulum
is just one leaf suspended
from a spider’s thread

17 Year Cicadas

Do the cicadas
underground know that they’ll surge
awake this next spring?

Abundance

Acorns drum the roof,
announcing the abundance
of which squirrels dream

Just The Fourth Monarch

Just the fourth monarch,
resting orange, black on milkweed,
I saw this morning

Self Same Hue

Cherry tomato
and high far rare reddish Mars
share the self same hue

Surf

The wind finds in oaks
a sound like surf, wild waving
of paper-thin green

So You’re Gone

So you’re gone, mother,
whom I never quite knew, since
you weren’t quite you

First Shock

The first shock has passed,
so that I can begin to grieve
with the falling leaves

Rolling In Offal

Rolling in offal,
the happy dog knows nothing
of this week’s events

Anxious

It made you anxious
to get near me, when I was
small and free and me

Tod

You had lost the will
to live long ago, but you
still loved being towed

Absence, Absence

I can’t find you now
in my mind - absence, absence -
that’s you in my mind

Your Mother’s Voice

Near the end you had
your mother’s voice and went slack
as she to be free

October Dogwood

A pool of scarlet,
near blood red, is a dogwood’s
image in fall lake.

Rare Distinction

One in ten million
were the odds you’d die of this -
a rare distinction

Branch Of Red Leaves

A branch of red leaves
is painted on the full moon
and stirred by the wind

Lake’s Lead

Skin you, dying, sloughed
returns as patches of mist,
white on the lake’s lead

Dying

Inexpressible
as the full moon setting now
is dying, the end

Tiger Stripes

Unafraid of frost,
a tiger striped bee hovers
over yellow leaf

Dead Crow

Ink as black as night’s,
crow becomes hieroglyphic
lying dead just here

Golden Haze

Sun turns morning mist
to golden haze in which fox
appears, then is gone

Mitochondrion

Mitochondrion,
tiny power plant, inscribed
with Ma’s initials

Oak Lake

Hollow fallen limb
has filled with water, made birds
a lake to swim in

Yellow Leaves

The yellow leaves now
are like a flock of gold birds
impatient for flight

Toad Lilies

The toad lilies start
early in spring, explode now
like autumn orchids

Fall Light

Fall light is itself
almost elegy, golden
with ripe remembrance

Like Water

Years flow like water,
silent, no clue where they go,
how they dissolve us

Earth’s Hold

Now I get it - earth
holds what was, what’s to come, all
the particulars

White Dog Prophecy

White dog, prophecy
of snow and memory, too,
trots in fall’s rainbow

Other

I always meant you
to be other than you were,
just as you did me

Nothing Inside

If I reached inside,
found nothing there, would I grasp
its rare, spare splendor?

Sky Of Cream

Sultry autumn day
waiting for rain to begin
from a sky of cream

Without Wrinkles

White is everywhere
as snow smooths the view - I see
you without wrinkles

Too Modest

Too modest to have
any sense of homecoming
a red leaf hits ground

Here

Here in the moonlight
I’m writing in the presence
of the subtlest shades

Each Death

Each death makes me feel
more vulnerable, closer
kin of earth, air, night

Lack

Our lack is our luck -
we need emptiness to fill
and silence to speak

Father Bloom

In the golden light
of painted autumn, father,
your face blooms in mine

Summer’s Ghost

Autumn’s summer’s ghost,
but bright robed, gay, until its
fingers turn to ice

Indian Summer

Indian summer
in all its glory – red men
everywhere unseen

Gunpowder River

Gunpowder River
cold as a rifle barrel
flows dark into dawn

Free Travel

Letters travel free
on the wings of butterflies -
they stand for nothing

Basking

Against bright blue sky
one bronze leaf now floats slowly
down from sycamore

Oversight

Half moon oversees
Indian Summer twilight -
I send smoke signals

Moon Lasso

Smoke wisps from my fire
to try to lasso the moon,
is lost in wide night

Death’s Name

How to say death’s name,
but with a caress, sweet sense
of how it holds me

Born Anew

To feel the same things
over and over until
they are born anew

Orange Butterflies

Two orange butterflies
flit across the river Styx,
turn to leaden mist

Fifteen Years 1988-2003

The old disaster
still lives in me, wakes, worries -
my life holds your death

Painted Leaves

Painted leaves like words
are wind blown and then lie still,
heaped in memory

Green Curtain

Green curtain’s lifted -
this lake shimmers in blue stripes
between trunks of ink

Green Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros horns
of spring’s skunk cabbage peer green
through fall’s brown cover

Tack

That last leaf, frozen
on a white sycamore branch,
tack stuck in blue sky

Happy Barking

The white dog’s happy
barking at a squirrel up
a tree, out of reach

River’s Black Tongue

The river’s black tongue
rolls on through rainy autumn
speaking to no one

Complex Pitchforks

Like complex pitchforks,
the bare sycamores impale clouds
on their shining tines

North Wind

Geese near shore I watch
through a veil of bittersweet
while a North wind roars

Brown Of Deer

Brown of deer is brown
of leaves on the forest floor,
but with leap added

Black Clouds

Black clouds in the west
have taken the massive shapes
of migrating whales

Zebra Flanks

Shadows stripe these hills
to zebra flanks - the herd is still
as I walk through it

Practice

Oaks sway and rustle
while overhead a lone hawk
practices circles

Noguchi

Massive fallen oak
propped on one limb throws a dark
gate across my path

Signatures

I miss my parents
their signatures in the air,
both fond and foolish

Snowy North

Shira, the white dog,
is melody in movement,
song of snowy North

Dawn

Today at dawn, sun
crouches in bare woods, waiting
to spring with bright fangs

Three Geese

Three geese are honking
a trio across the lake
in clean autumn air

Imagination

Does white dog wander
in her imagination
as she does in mine?

Rainbow

Grief is a rainbow
that can never span from here
to far lost sweet there

A Gem

Sorrow condenses
like carbon under pressure
to become a gem

Legacy

Breath is not conquest,
but how I burn just to be,
become legacy

November 23, 2003

Fifteen years ago
today you died and my world
went as still as lead

My Own Garden

I’m my own garden,
a plot to cultivate
green shoots in earth’s dark

Red Ember

A cardinal is
a red ember (remember)
amid the arched thorns

Names In Fire

If I wrote your names
in fire across the night sky,
you’d still sleep in earth

Mounds

My feet caress each
mound I cross - it just might be
you sleeping life off

Flight Of Bluebird

Swift flight of bluebird
over water, startling as
the sky in motion

Toreador

At dawn, the black cat
chases its tail, is both bull
and toreador

Bowed Evergreens

After two days’ snow
this evening comes softly down
on bowed evergreens

Jagged

Grief is the record
of disappointment, how life
found a jagged path

Remedy

Once imagining
knows it rules nothing, it’s free
to be remedy

Appendix

Shadow of a hawk
on snow, shadow of hawk’s prey
appended to claws

Out From Under

Emerald green grass
comes out from under white snow,
stares up at blue sky

Yellow Pansies

After the snow melts,
the yellow pansies it crushed
are bright sunlit fans

Author Of Light

Who is the author
of light, the painter, dreamer,
the singer of stars?

My Kinsmen

Trees are my kinsmen
who stand and stand, lift and lean,
drink in water, light

Word’s Worth

The worth of a word
depends on the living it
holds and that holds it

Like Wine

Like wine, ruined hopes
age and grow beyond themselves,
found another realm

Swirling Flurries

Herself snow’s color,
the white dog has no shadow
in swirling flurries

Bloom Of Light

A few words for what
can’t be said - the bloom of light
on a new day’s stem

Applause

Applause is the sound
as a dark wheel of coots lifts
from this cold blue lake

Flickers

Marsh is lit gray gold,
with ice patches here and there,
flickers in the trees

Partake

Partake of sorrow?
I’ve drained cup after cup, know
I’m myself the grape

Plates Of Ice

White-lined plates of ice
now have formed where puddles were,
bringing grace to mud

Still Toothed

White bare lower jaw,
still toothed, gleams through the leaves
at black base of pine

Snow Flakes

Swirling on the lake,
a flock of gulls, snow flakes which
can’t finish falling

Already

Where the deer’s hooves make
marks in the sand, writing has
already begun

December 21

Stillness and glint, lake
wearing new made ice collar,
pine scent, squawk of ducks

Not Basho

When Basho surprised
the frog, he was not Basho,
nor even the frog

Second Firmament

When I meet darkness
inside me, I look for stars,
second firmament

Wild Turkeys

Wild turkeys rising,
tail fans spread, the same color
as the leaves falling

October Clover

October clover,
as pale purple as ever,
lonely in the grass

Moore

Henry Moore lifted
the shapes of rock from nature,
added attachment

New Split Oak

Scent of new split oak,
green rhapsody of summers
long past, still present

Autumn Mists

Autumn mists, white sheets
with nothing written on them,
pierced by bright bird calls

Saffron Threads

On my hands and knees
I place thin orange saffron threads
on a dry oak leaf

Chalk Clouds

Chalk clouds on blue sky
changing characters wind-worked
no way to read them

Last Traces

Smooth on my fingers,
these ashes, the last traces
of a great white oak

Flowers

My parents, planted now
where they’ll never bloom, are still
flowers in my mind

Red Streamer

Cardinal in flight,
red streamer unfurled over
tawny fall meadow

Can’t Get Used

I can’t get used, Dad,
to your death, not a problem
that you struggle with

Meerschaum

Two years dead and still
you’re puffing white smoke clouds from
Meerschaum in my mind

Flotilla

Flotilla of leaves
floating down the stream - what is
this life that leads me?

Golden

Autumn twilight weaves
golden forest tapestry
under snow claw moon

Incandescent

Weeping cherry’s turned
incandescent hues of gold,
all tears forgotten

Sudden

Sudden sun’s splendor,
tenderness of mid-autumn,
lone gold leaf floats down

Seasoning

Red leaves amid brown
fall has its own seasoning
waiting for first frost

16th Anniversary

Sixteen years ago -
an instant - I’m someone else -
a red tumbling leaf

Snout Is Still

White dog’s snout is still,
ears twitch, interrogating
fall wind for the news

Bare Snag

That bare snag was once
more complicated, also
far less beautiful

Old Thoughts

I’m wandering through
the dark closets of my mind,
trying on old thoughts

Trembling

Not to understand,
but to live like morning dew
trembling in the light

Big Oak Leaves

Oak leaves big as boats
carpet these deep woodland paths -
my feet crunch sunlight

Fable

Anemones - two
and only two, last white blooms
in fable of fall

Not Just Facts

Away from the facts
to something fiercer, the facts
that are not just facts

Buck Bounds

The white of deer’s tail
compels my eye as the buck
bounds swiftly away

Nothing At All

Following a scent,
white dog runs circles where we
see nothing at all

Linger

Leaves seem to linger
as they float down a soft breeze
this sunny Sunday

Only Fair

It seems only fair
that I should subvert this form
as it subverts me

Rustle

The sum of whispers,
rustle of squirrels’ quick feet
in dry autumn leaves

Forgotten Wings

Leaves fall one by one,
birds that have forgotten wings,
land and then lie still

Office

A doctor wonders -
“Am I minister of life
or death, or of both?

Two Quiet Ducks

No deer and the sun
in my eyes by the blue lake
and two quiet ducks

Flocking

Robins are flocking
below flame red bittersweet,
ready to fly south

Fear

Jagged as lightning,
fear rips through me, showing what
I don’t want to see

Lush Flesh

Wonder of the word
is it can show how lush flesh
becomes less and more

Not To Think

Help me not to think,
but let the swift river flow,
carrying me off

Old Oak

Burning all day long,
old oak keeps me company
as it becomes ash

One By Scarlet One

Downy woodpecker
picks off bittersweet berries
one by scarlet one

Gray Hands

Marsh reeds with gray hands
upraised waiting for the wind
to pose its questions

Loud Mallard

Loud mallard splashes
brown water in which the sun
is hiding, silver

Ah, Woodpecker

Ah, woodpecker, how
I love your beak’s precision -
rat-a-tat, no doubt

Ink Brush

I can’t remember
why I picked up this ink brush,
how to put it down

Migration

An orderly V
of Canadian geese, high,
keeping the old ways

With Folded Wings

Hawk, with folded wings,
sits high in an oak watching
a wind-stirred meadow

C. N.

Death, unadorned, walks
more and more, expressionless,
the ways of my life

Sixteen

The weight increases,
you were lost so long ago,
sixteen years, today

Gout Bites

Gout bites my ankle,
but still I walk autumn’s woods,
hear geese in the clouds

Bolder

Older and older
I get bolder and bolder -
less of me to lose

I, Mouse

Hawk’s cry is ugly,
announces menace I, mouse,
feel in my belly

Like A Cloud

Our daughter’s sleeping,
floating like a cloud above
where her parents wake

North Wind

North wind is a broom
that sweeps the sky clean, brings cold
and the eyes of stars

Nurse

I nurse my sorrow
as if it were a baby
destined to grow up

Quartet

A quartet of ducks
bobbing where the river turns
a sunlit shoulder

Native Integral

Twisting wild cherry
is a native integral
in December woods

Armada

Armada of geese
attended by reflections
in the quiet lake

Slug’s Progress

Lines my life traces
shiny as a slug’s progress
on a sweet green leaf

Gray In Burgundy

Gray in burgundy,
my head in hydrangeas
riches in late fall

Liberty

To think and to think
and then somehow stop thinking,
empty this prison

Gorge

Life seems unchanging
until it slips all at once
into a wild gorge

Fox Trots Left

We’ve piled the oak leaves
into a brown mountain the fox
trots left to avoid

Bone

Dog barks at her bone,
as if it could still get up,
walk over to her

Boundless Blue

The sky’s boundless blue
holds wisps of wandering cloud
and my own two eyes

Question Mark

Lever for prying
being open and scythe, too,
for harvesting light

Quiet Rings

With what ease the rain
wakes quiet rings on the lake
which folds them back in

At Play

I make my small things
suggest what they can not say -
universe at play

Siamese Twins

The book of yearning,
the book of learning - twins, stuck
with a single head

Rosetta Stone

Staggering loss can
be a Rosetta Stone both
for sun and shadow

Self-Same Sun

The oak that’s burning
is about my father’s age,
made from self-same sun

Recollecting

In recollecting
my lost hopes there’s more pleasure
than pain - very strange

No Two

No two chunks of oak
are the same, so I listen
carefully to each

Stars

To find stars by which
to navigate me is all
I’ve ever wanted

December 14

Suddenly it’s cold -
Orion still goes naked
as I bundle up

Fragile And Fragrant

Virtue is fragile
and fragrant as pine needles
scattered on the ground

My Way

I’m in my own way
on my own way - I obscure
where I’m going, why

Parliament

In the autumn thorns
a parliament of sparrows
meets to debate...what?

Rags

Memory sells rags
and calls them rainbows and silk,
forgets how flesh hurts

Vanity

Vanity’s a sea
that has no far shore, no wind
to carry past me

Room And Board

Your lives continue
in me, a hotel that can’t
charge for room and board

Places I’ve Been

The places I’ve been
have all lost their names and map’s
only mystery

Horror

Horror of belief
is it imposes design
where blankness breathes free

Blue Sky

Walking in mountains
my thoughts are like those few clouds
drifting in blue sky

Not Six

I’m back from Paris
and I’ve brought myself with me –
I’m sixty, not six

How Many

How many of me
are walking through rainy woods
beside pock-marked lake?

Foolish Questions

I go on asking
just the same foolish questions
as when I was six

Inklings

Inklings of order,
not at Key West, but beside
the old river Seine

Mediterranean

The sea is so blue,
not wine dark - my good fortune
to swim in the blue

On The Way To St. Agnes

A thistle blooms blue
like nothing I’ve ever seen –
sky comes down to earth

The Damned Wind

The gray of my beard
recalls the dandelion –
let damned wind disperse

Silver Spider Web

Silver spider web
wearing just a few round beads
of yesterday’s rain

Limber Branch

A single chestnut
inside a green mace still clings
to its limber branch

Black Paws

White dog has black paws
after her romp down river
through rich bottom mud

So Very Many

I am overwhelmed –
so very many books, words
what is there to say?

This Season

My old friends are old
and so am I – subtleties
of dusk in autumn

Whatever

I whisper secrets
to myself and then forget
whatever I’ve heard

Staying

I am staying home
to let unspoiled places be,
to let myself be

My Work

Inside all day, I
traveled other minds and hearts,
their odd green homelands

Rain Has Made

Rain has made this day
into a dim drumming hum –
cat sleeps peacefully

Fill Me Up

The dead fill me up
with quiet conversations
without any lips

Windy Rainy

Windy rainy day
a blizzard of yellow leaves
hides white dog from me

Heron

Heron among ducks –
it steps so scrupulously
and then goes so still

Company

I wound the clock, so
now it speaks hours again,
keeps me company

White Dog Dashes

The white dog dashes
at each new glimpse of squirrel,
thrilled by autumn’s chill

Season Of Loss

This season of loss,
how beautiful the woods are,
as death lies in wait.

“Not To”

Trying ‘not to’ is
one fin of remembering,
the shark in my heart

Flashing Like Leaves

Hundreds of sparrows
flashing like leaves in the wind
in riverside brush

Elks Playing Kazoo -Olympic National Forest

Elks playing kazoo –
is this the refuge Pan’s found
from reason’s madness?

Like Birds

Like birds in a wood,
words live in my mind, take wing
just as it suits them

Work Of Autumn

The work of autumn,
the leaves blazing in the wind
makes way for whiteness

After Last Night’s Storm

Happy white dog wades
down the river that is high
after last night’s storm

Raptor’s Beak

Cruel, curved raptor’s beak,
draft of scimitar, stolen
from the pale new moon

Ease Of Mind

The ease of my mind
recalls catastrophe, how
you died in beauty

Gold Nuggets

Falling yellow leaves
flash in the light, gold nuggets
returning to earth

Two Hawks

High against blue sky
in bare boned white sycamore
two hawks wait and watch

Love

Illusion, that’s love
and all the lesser demons –
and then there is love

Fall Color

I sit and I stare
at fall color as if I’d
not seen it before

Nothing To Say

I’ve nothing to say
except my heart is lonely
whatever I do

Forbid Me Lack

Forbid me lack and
I’m out of luck, for what’s not
inspires all that is

Cloak Of Age

Now I’m putting on
the cloak of age – I’m gray or
worse, invisible

Fierce

Cardinals in pines,
as red as flying blood, red
and fierce as freedom

Autumn Watercress

Autumn watercress
just at the edge of the marsh –
what joy to pick it

November Bee

Bee in November
nuzzles my ear – can I be
nectar bearing bloom?

Peace Paint

Indian summer -
seduced by the light, I tromp
woods in their peace paint

Scent-painted

Woods are scent-painted
for the white dog – last night’s fox,
the dawn’s thirsty does

Correspondent

My address changes
as I move about inside,
lost correspondent

Sober

I’ve become sober –
image has lost its magic –
boulder is boulder

Conviction

I’ve no conviction
of the worth of what I say
it is simply me

Eighteen Years (2006)

I’ve lost track of you
except you’re deep inside me
where I lose myself

Delicate

Sycamore’s white arms,
as delicate as Helen
of Troy, but rooted

Explode

Small birds twittering
in still green leafed bush explode
when white dog trots by

Heaps

I stutter in heaps
of five, seven syllables
whose meaning is mist

Blue Bowl

Blue bowl of heaven
under which we live, which is
only air, our air

Eighteen Years

Eighteen years ago,
I was someone else, now drowned
deep in sea of me

Final Landing

Hawk’s final landing –
no more circling in the sky –
claws sheathed, pacified

No Point, November 23, 2006

No point grieving you
who are long dead - I grieve me,
now completely changed

Head Of Hair

What a head of hair
I once had – now cold winds bite
my baby pink scalp

Big Fox

Big fox out of marsh
moving fast in this daylight –
how still the tan reeds

Caught In Oak

New moon caught in oak –
could I climb the trunk and kiss
what I always miss?

Fog Gentles

Fog gentles the trees
to late fall calligraphy –
sycamore’s a ghost

Last Day

November’s last day,
a thousand coots, a slight breeze,
a flock of bluebirds

Great Blue

Honking its odd horn
a great blue heron flaps up
the black coiled river

Less In Peace

I’ve lived less in peace
than in pieces of puzzles
changeable as cloud

Poetry Is Dead

Poetry is dead
if it’s understood and that
goes double for love

Hankering

Constant hankering
after knowledge – what is it
lets the worm writhe free?

Green Iguana – St. John, December

A green iguana
skitters across coal black road
as death comes so close

Moonlit Worry

My worry is moonlit
as the wind keeps on blowing
both inside and out

Bright Moon

Under a bright moon
the sea puts on silver scales
becomes largest fish

Wise Pelican

A wise pelican
crested in pollen yellow
holds still on black rock

Silver Galaxy

Millions of minnows
silver submerged galaxy
that feeds pelicans

Restless

The wind is restless
as my own thoughts as I lie
under waking moon

Sailing

The wind keeps blowing
and drives my swift sailing thoughts
across inner sea

One Tree Frog

A single tree frog
transforms the hilly darkness
with sleep killing song

Tarpon

Tarpon’s dark, immense
gliding through the firmament
of silver small fry

Inch Long Barracuda

The menace built in,
inch long barracuda swims
the mangrove grottos

Sweetness Of Skin

The blue and the breeze.
of evening and sea and sky –
the sweetness of skin

Gold Road

Gold road of the sun,
light paved on rippling water
ends here at my feet

Mangrove

In this mangrove world
lit from above are squares
gorgeous as Paris

Two Tang

Two tang in the deep,
head to tail, chase each other,
are lost in circles

Squid

Who would have guessed squid
were so lovely, delicate
of features, colors?

Back

I’m back from the past
where I kept calling my name
and no one answered

Bahia, September 2008

Red laterite hills
and blue ocean and green palms –
finding is losing

Low

Four hundred miles gone
a cyclone rules our atmosphere –
I’m low in the low

Futile

All things change – I’m changed
by my futile resistance
to each tiny change

High Breezy

High breezy blue sky
after the hurricane’s left,
moist depression gone

Tumbling Leaf

Single tumbling leaf
counterfeits a butterfly
orange wings unfolding

Virginia Creeper

Virginia creeper
in autumn – caught red handed
climbing the old oak

Stories

Fall – the leaf trembles –
does that white swan know any
stories of dying?

Death’s Forest

Beautiful fall day,
still green leaves against blue sky –
I walk death’s forest

Croak

High blue aching sky,
croak of the great blue heron,
leaf riding the wind

What

The darkness of light,
illusion that what I see
shows me what I am

Thinnest

Now’s the thinnest slice
of being, and all that is
or that ever was

Grackles

Migrating grackles
fill the crowns of the oaks
with black snow flurries

Passing

In early autumn
I intuit my winter
in each passing ache

Scaled

Scaled with shelf fungus
fallen cherry stretches out
in autumn sunshine

In The Stream

The white dog’s happy
in the stream, braces herself
against the current

Remembrance

The perch cardinal
just left is still quivering –
such is remembrance

Gray Question Mark

Gray question mark cat
fast asleep on the pink bench –
questions never sleep

Lift-Off

2 pileated
woodpeckers down on the ground,
then a loud lift-off

Blue Sky

How blue is this sky,
color of a robin’s egg,
all empty of clouds

Crisp

The cool of the nights
is luxury of autumn –
how crisp my mind is

Mind Games

When I wish it full,
my mind’s empty; when I wish
it empty, it fills

Spin

There’s no way to spin
October’s gold into words,
but a fool might try

October 17, Sixth Anniversary

I remembered and
forgot you all day long, you,
unforgettable

Buried Bulbs

Day of limpid light
I’m doing nothing at all,
less than buried bulbs

Round Trip

I am dust going
back to dust – all tickets
are round trip tickets

Blank

The printed letters
take sudden flight from the page,
leaving me a blank

Bleached

Bleached corn stalks emerge
from the morning mists as blind
and deaf as the dead

Crash of 2008

Nothing is the wealth
I have irreducibly –
nothing’s less than it

Wild Ride

New dryads’ saddles
another autumn’s wild ride,
smooth and firm their seats

Great Blue

Down river’s black back
golden leaves are floating now
past great blue heron

River’s Spine

Kingfisher chatters
up, down the black river’s spine –
he sheds blue beneath

Jurie, Novemeber 6, 2008

No memorial
save what’s lived inside me now
twenty long years gone

Of Grief

Memory of grief
and the grief of memory –
each lives in other

Embrace

Autumn’s an embrace
that holds me and all I’ve lost,
lets me find myself

Thick

Thick November fog
is balm – white anemones
gleam, close rooted stars

Mid-November

Blue jay under gray,
cardinal against stream’s black,
mourning dove quartet

First Snow

Swirling white petals
returning to bare cherry –
November’s first snow

Plotting

Fox rests quietly
in the vale of dreams, plotting –
the moon winks at him

Misty

Out of misty dreams
I rise exhausted – what took
it out of me, why?

Almost

Almost winter sunshine
makes this new snow dazzling white,
under a blue bowl

Hawk

The hawk comes and goes
murderous in its intent,
quite at ease in flight

Gusts

Hawk lights in tulip,
sits and sways with the wind’s gusts,
accepts sun’s caress

Stew

The stew of purpose
changes its ingredients
with each passing day

Juvenile

Hawk’s a juvenile,
white bellied against blue sky,
scanning the ivy

Zero

Oak leaf falls slowly,
degree of difficulty -
precisely zero

Near

Flicker’s on the branch
above the hawk – what do they
make of each other?

Afterglow

Afterglow of sun,
orange tongue in the mouth of night –
will dawn give it words?

Intimate

Darkness is complete –
I am left with my mind’s light,
most intimate sun

Surprised

I stumble into
my thoughts and then I’m surprised
to find myself there

Shade

The amber of tea
is the shade of autumn leaves
clinging to their trees

Work

It’s a lot of work
to know anything and hard
to keep from knowing

Strangest

The strangest darkness
is the one that lives in light —
as dust in snowflake

Backcountry

It’s the backcountry
of myself that holds me, so
I keep wandering

Rainy Day

Question mark cat tries
all the doors, hoping one has
dissenting weather

Mallards

Squadron of mallards,
drakes green headed as parrots,
ducks dun as the reeds

Dregs

Four-thirty twilight,
this year dwindling down to dregs –
how precious the light

Down

Moon climbs down an oak
so slowly and carefully –
raccoon passes it

Last Day

This last day of fall
I put an ink black beret
on my bald head, smile

Flint

Not quite all used up,
I’m flint that’s stingy with spark,
but can still start fire

Drab

Cardinal couple
in the bare dogwood, only
bright spots in the drab

Itch

I seek, but don’t know
what I’m seeking – curious
is the itch I am

Outcroppings

When I look around,
outcroppings of mystery
are all that I see

Wild White

Few degrees warmer-
late March morning carpeted
with wild white flowers

Exacted

Each word exacted
from heart’s beat approximates
what can’t be spoken

Greta

The black cat is dead
whose swift and lithe loveliness
leapt twenty quick years

Kingfishers

Up the river, down,
kingfishers, needles piercing
this cool April dawn

Souvenirs

White dog is sleeping,
white snout propped on mud black paws,
souvenirs of stream

A Single Breath

Every word I write
shorthand for a single breath
shorthand that falls short

Spring Frog Song

Bright chirps of small birds
overlaid on spring frog song
boiling in the bog

Dying Fox

In our tiny wood
a dying fox lies quiet
in deep green ivy

Horizontal Snow

Horizontal snow
in early April before
cherry blossoms come

Whimsy Whinnies

When whimsy whinnies
like a horse, I kick my heels,
run under the moon

When

I can’t remember
when, so full of emptiness,
I’ve been so content

Green Eden

White dog is sleeping
on her back in green Eden
of a spring evening

Young Again

Pink cherry blossoms –
the old tree is young again
under a gray sky

White Fungus

How white the fungus
on the trunk of fallen oak –
white as dogwood’s blooms

Unopened

Unopened lilacs
are stains of a purple blood
against green branches

Exact Pink

Blossoms’ exact pink
I’d forgotten – old cherry
takes me by surprise

Wonder Of Sex

The wonder of sex
is in the morning’s white mist –
and the worry, too

Rasp

Sorrow rasps in me
like a cat’s tongue on my hand –
peculiar pleasure

Step To Wisdom

Each step to wisdom
is a new embarrassment -
what awkward freedom

Yellow Surprise

A yellow surprise
fluttering up from ivy –
year’s first swallowtail

After Two Decades

After two decades
sky blue blue jays all about –
mockingbirds vanquished

In Bamboo

Blue jays in bamboo –
is that swaying brown nest theirs
after twenty years?

Shovels

Exuberant spring –
shovels of red and yellow –
long-handled tulips

Rash Vision

Interior dark
is where light most surprises –
sudden rash vision

Spring Bursting

Cormorant on rock
near the lake’s shore with green spring
bursting all about

May Apples

Like furled umbrellas
May apples break the surface
and then spread green arms

Hinge

A door worth seeking
is in and out all at once,
anchored by a hinge

Pirate

I’m my privacy’s
pirate – I hijack vessels
that sail inner sea

60

I tire easily
and indefatigably
go on being me

Giraffes

Giraffes in the air
Chicago construction cranes
work on the Sabbath

Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan blue
flat plate to the horizon
holds an ore boat up

Words

I try to resign
from words and into them, too –
such deep confusion

Bare Wood

The feel of bare wood -
intimacy with my skin –
carbon knows carbon

Monument

A single morel
amid leafy detritus
is a monument

Phlox Filled Meadow

In phlox filled meadow
a patch of white violets –
a cloud in blue sky

No Order

I can’t put my mind
in order no matter what
season I am in

Overrun

Gold centers of white
peonies are overrun
with small greedy bees

Spring Sickness

Sick in the springtime –
old fox has been dead a month –
white blooms everywhere

Lost Beyond

The dark uncertainty
of my deepest dreams, when I’m
lost beyond myself

Sixty-First Spring

My sixty-first spring
hair and beard almost as white
as the peonies

Camouflage

In my dreams the dead
wear the camouflage of life
I’m not done weeping

Restless

The trees are restless
in the night and so am I –
wind blows through my dreams

Vast

Now I inhabit
is just as vast as ever
as death shadows it

Ghost Moon

I sit down to sketch
without a clue what’s coming –
ghost moon in blue sky

Small Things

Small things are the keys
to the biggest locks, riddles
of being right here

True Rubies

These false strawberries
gleaming in lawn I’m mowing –
tiny true rubies

Wilderness

Wherever I am,
there is wilderness, baffling,
unkempt, riotous

Hollow Oak

In that oak raccoons
have lived more than fifty years –
now home is dying

Rasping Voice

I’m dying into
this tiny form - grain of sand
with a rasping voice

Illness Fades

Illness fades away
leaving shadow and promise
of future demise

In Silence

Something in silence
strives to be released – a bird
in the subtlest cage

Lithe As Ever

The black cat is dead
and still as lithe as ever
in mind’s undergrowth

Subterranean

Subterranean
palace of morel’s making
pocked spires' inventor

Gathering Clouds

May afternoon’s sky
as white as an egg’s inside –
I’m always hatching

Ambition And Dust

Ambition and dust
are closest kin, for they both
steal the touch of now

Next To Nothing

I’m next to nothing,
always hard up against it,
persistent phantom

Ruined Hopes

In the aftermath
of ruined hopes, quieted
beauty starts to sing

More Clearly

Ever more clearly
I see what I’ve lost – losing
and finding – are they one?

Fragments

I speak in fragments
aspiring to mosaic
as yet undefined

Birth Of A Perfume

Aroma of skunk
and the scent of wild roses –
birth of a perfume

Shining

Turtles were shining
on the bank – did swallowtail
flitting by spook them?

Evening Calm

Evening calm, white dog,
purple allium, birdsong
in the green of oaks

Old Fox

I can’t help missing
the old fox who used to pad
through our woods each day

Moon Knows

I’m trying to fold
the tent of my ambition –
moon knows I’ve been drunk

Last Night

Here’s where the deer slept
last night away – a bower
of white wild roses

Gander On Rock

Gander stands on rock,
stretches his neck and bugles,
his brood at his feet

Leisure

Leisure is rough work –
when the fish aren’t biting,
that’s when regrets do

Bottom

I’m trying to find
the bottom of what I am –
under all the waves

Snake In The Grass

A snake in the grass
stops the white dog in her tracks –
an old enemy

Small Dryad

Huge Dryad’s saddle
is joined by a tiny one
for a small Dryad

Orisha

Berl in tulip tree
is the rough head of a god,
some lost Orisha

Sun Comes Out

The sun comes out
from behind a cloud, I do, too -
where have I been, where?

Restless Leaves

The breeze stirs green leaves –
desire searching for balance –
restless leaves stir me

Someone Else

Ask me my name and
I’ll invent myself for you,
become someone else

Tail?...Tale?

Gray cat doesn’t mind
going through life with question
mark for a tail?...tale?

Joined

Nothing and something
tried to part ways, but found they
were joined at the hip

Deer Sleep

In wild rose bower,
deer sleep under bright May moon –
can dream surpass this?

Heavy

Early June morning –
heavy honeysuckle scent
floats above the creek

Lavender

Almost open now
the lavender blossom just
hints at its own scent

Home At Last

Magnolia’s first
giant white blossom crowns it,
star that’s home at last

White Mountain Laurel

Brown deer are sleeping
amid white mountain laurel
above the valley

Special Bark

I still miss old fox,
the special bark the white dog
used only for him

Hunter-Gatherer Glee

The first ripe blackcap-
a hunter-gatherer glee
awakens in me

The Old Clock

I wind the old clock
as if it could tick time new,
so tick me new, too

One Purple

One purple iris,
unaware how it changes
everything that’s green

Hot Day

Hot day of late spring -
the gray cat is stretched out – when
will she melt away?

White Clover

Sea of white clover
here in late June, each head fine –
I won’t mow today

Spring brings such sorrows
over what can’t be renewed -
what’s dissolved in mist

White mists, so puzzling,
so beautiful – they hold all
I have lost, squandered

White mists, delicate
as profiles of those I’ve loved,
like them, never still

White mists take the shapes
of white peony blossoms
and drop white petals

White mists – no mercy,
don’t care who I see, who I
spread my arms to hug

White mists wet the grass
as spring sun rises to burn
away yesterday

Sweet

Cloud on deep green,
white dog is diabetic,
as sweet as ever

Mail

I wait for the mail
with a child’s hope - I want word
from all I have lost

Robin Chicks

I approach the nest
where robin chicks wait for food –
robins dive bomb me

So Hot

So hot, so muggy –
but why can’t I even think?
what ‘s happened to me?

Inner Jungle

In inner jungle
I find words beautiful as
birds of paradise

Door

Each garden holds, hides
a door to Eden, but how
to find it, pass through?

Tall

Tall slender grasses
sway in summer breeze and shed
mists of silver seeds

Basil

First week of summer,
hot and humid, basil thriving
as if this were home

Miracle Ordinary

I try to record
what I call the miracle
of ordinary

Between Patients

Alone with Montaigne
I wait for the next patient
to bring news of now

100 Degrees (Fahrenheit)

In the heat of day
breezes still whisper softly
in deep forest shade

New Pieces

Being with myself
is a perpetual puzzle –
new pieces each day

Almost Think

The heat of day breaks
in late afternoon and I
can almost think now

Small Words

I mumble small words
and then can not decipher
what I may have meant

Soft Fingers

Evening breeze enchants
with soft fingers on my cheek
as moon’s a gold hint

Neither Here Nor There

I went wandering
I was no longer here and
then no longer there

Pale Purple

In the midst of mint,
morning glories are blooming,
white and pale purple

Independence?

Queen Ann’s Lace trembles
in a hot July 4th breeze –
what’s independence?

Intricate

Nothing’s intricate
beyond the fact of being
and knowing I am

No Rain

No rain changes scents –
the sense of dry takes over
along with deep fear

Shadow Net

Of shifting shadows’
net cast across a green lawn
swallowtail flits free

Cheerful…

Cabbage butterfly
as white as a flying flag
cheerful in lilies

Few Mosquitoes

It’s so dry and hot
there are so few mosquitoes –
I start to miss them

Stitch In

Each little poem
a stitch in a bright garment
that I’ll never wear

Old Magnolia

Old magnolia
stands staunch in this blazing heat –
no past, no future

Artificial

Artificial rain,
the drumbeat of sprinkler drops
in parched July wood

Both At Once

Summer evening mood –
a bird sings joy and sorrow
and sings both at once

Too Hot

It’s too hot for thought –
I dream of my dead parents –
missing is missing

Relief

Cardinal flowers,
cardinals – red is relief
in fierce summer heat

Swallowtail

Heart stopping beauty
of swallowtail in the breeze
before twilight dims

Last Fireflies

Last fireflies flicker
lonely lights in late July –
they can’t know sorrow

Drunken

Drunken swallowtail,
yellow patch in heavy air –
rumble of thunder

Getting On

I’m part of nothing
and nothing is part of me –
we get along well

August Sniff

This afternoon breeze
stirs August dapple – white dog
sniffs with her black nose

After…

After weeks of heat
this fine afternoon changes
who I think I am

Gentle Breeze

A thousand worries –
a gentle breeze on the cheek -
which one is more real?

Mesh

Quiet mesh of green
of which I will soon be part
past acquiescence

Bricks

Metamorphic bricks
is what words are – buildings change
without touch of trowel

Orange Flag

Flying in the rain,
monarch, fluttering orange flag –
indomitable

Leaden

My tongue is leaden,
so I stare into the fire,
watching orange tongues leap

I Lost

I lost a few lines
last night, threw them back into
the pond of silence

Almost

From high in green oak
yellow swallowtail whirls down -
almost autumn leaf

Reach Me

I’m always searching
for what’s inside out of reach –
I never reach me

In Sorts

I’m not on good terms
with myself, never have been –
could I be in sorts?

Summer Stir

Summer stir of leaves,
green whispering in the breeze,
high clouds, no moon yet

Color Of Rust

The color of rust,
slimy mushrooms, growing out
from huge fallen oak

On Slate Roof

Acorns on slate roof,
cracks that herald fall’s coming –
squirrels on alert

Moon Dreams