This Wind Will Sweep the Branches Clean

This wind will sweep the branches clean of leaves,
and in that hurly-burly I
am something like a tree.
Who does not have leaves to shake?
Would not feel that strenuous comb
pulled through her hair
and shout a-hilltop,
For the winter I am free!
These planetary stirrings are our saving
every season; are the reason
we can make ourselves anew,
keeping what we are
and how we grew,
and sending all the rest to fill the sky.

October 31 2009

Here's to the Young Couple

Here's to the young couple
so foolishly in love,
separate in their churches but
determined in their hearts.
Such simple children, they said; how long
can such a union last? But look:
as if their hearts are amber, still,
long decades and a life along,
past children of their own
and all the accidents and happiness
that we are bound to, see
the couple even now and ever
proof against the end:
twin souls unchanging, young,
and foolishly in love.

In memory of Mary Himelrick

October 22 2009

Meaning Shared

Meaning shared
is meaning multiplied.
Listen to the echoes of your thought
resounding down the avenues of other minds,
transmuting as they travel
till their timbre tolls
ten thousand different tones:
successive inspirations taking flight,
startled into being by this novel light.

October 22 2009

The Dog Is Crooked As He Lies

The dog is crooked as he lies.
His tail is serpentine.
His simple angularity--
nose on paw,
eyes uptilted under hopeful brow,
one leg stretched out on the rug behind
forgotten as an orphaned sock--
speak his artless innocence.
Who would not have
such a being for a friend?

October 22 2009

To Certain Poets, on Their Cryptic Poetry

Through this I see that there is a particular twist in the air--
whose shape these words express
best, though certainly bereft of meaning.
This glossy paraphernalia wily gleams,
suffering much that I could not design--
again, a heart's impulse, recorded in the sound of phrases,
not in what they say. So much we moderns learned;
and to our certain if as yet unfelt regret.

What shouts of homecoming we would cry,
if once our tongues could be unlocked.
It would be like turning around
all at once,
to see the way behind made clear,
all the tortured turnings straightened
and the road before an easy and familiar path at whose end
family and fellowship lie waiting for our song.

Too long have we flown with the daring boy; consider if you will
(or suppress)
your readiness to admit the thought
of walking in a slightly different way,
married to the sound and meaning both,
and the yearning in your floating feet
to touch the earth again.

October 21 2009

Love When

Love when
is only love when
always is the when.

October 12 2009

Poetic dictum

(Overly clever)

A poem should be as long as it is supposed to be.

They Are in the Pictures

They are in the pictures,
unconscious in this happy window
of anything but the day,
and it is my firmest resolution
when next we take them
to remain within. It is better by so much
more than I can tell, to look out from a frame
than in.

October 7 2009

But This Is How We Go On

But this is how we go on
one stone to another,
hoping always that our foot
will find the next and that
there is a next to find.
And beyond that who can say,
except
that if into the stream we do descend,
we know there is a bottom and depend
on water just to wash us,
and not to be our end.

October 7 2009

Falling, They Are Falling

A piece about Autumn.

Falling, they are falling.
I am looking out the red among the green,
knowing they are what interests you.
Suddenly, flying things invest the air,
and I am in an unexpected reef.
Near the surface the schools are practicing departure:
wheel right,
moving float,
vertical shift,
dart left,
return
into the oval formation;
now rest,
and discuss with your neighbors on each branch.
A singleton rockets up before my face;
bottom feeders scour the roads,
mindful only of the harvest till
the subtle signal comes to leave
and they are one,
flying through the falling and
going, they are gone.

October 5 2009 - January 21 2010

Her Hair Is in Happy Disarray

Her hair is in happy disarray,
as are her teeth, which she gladly bares
for the camera to show that precious gap
whose softness she must often touch,
marveling at the newness of a painless loss.
The towel round her shoulders is a cape
whose roughness I can feel,
protecting shivering limbs
that scorn protection in the sun.

Is this a photograph or memory?
Something reaching from the frame
provokes my heart to joy.

October 14 2009