Renewal

She thought it might be a library
because the banner by the entrance said renew.
I corrected her mistake and she said oh
like cleaning whiteboards at school
or showering
or making your first penance
and I said yes
you are exactly right
and as we left the church behind
I put my arm around her shoulder
to hug her wisdom to me
and also was renewed.

December 31 2010

Storm After Christmas

From day to night the lights are lit
along this unpaved road
on which the crow is walking
where the snowplows bit,
and where the dog is dallying
with scents that winter locked up 
in its bitter storm.

After celebration came emergency
revising all our plans for season's joy.
So much was taken, 
barely given,
we all were lost with it,
and for the best of reasons
once more we went shopping.

Slowly, slowly comes the thaw:
The little spring they forecast.
Soon a while the dog may taste 
again those odors, and the sea
give back what it has stolen.
The winter's long before us
and the cold will come again,
but certain longer light will show
at least there is a way.

December 29 2010

Untitled 12/23/2010

It is the weariness of a year
near its end that sighs inside me. 
I can feel the weight of all its days
and the fractious fever of those final few
that pushed me to this stopping place:
here,
where silence sits beside me,
waiting like a faithful, lifelong friend.
And we will rest together,
expectant for the end,
saying nothing to each other 
of the hope that we still harbor,
secret in our hearts,
that we will see the advent once again
from darkness
of the miracle of joy.

December 23 2010

They Are Two So Beautiful

They are two so beautiful
who should say that there is more
ever to be wished than this
that I and they and she and he
remain, together in this place
till time brings round its changes
and that when it does
our hands will still be clasped
and hearts will still be one?

December 18 2010

Zeno, Farewell

A single hammer stroke is to a finished house
as we are to the stars appearing nightly.
Zeno said you can't get there from here
but daily we defy him. We finish walks,
step and step, though each one is impossible.
We do our deeds, from zero to completion,
though failure is our starting point
and ignorance our guide. Again, again, these people
continue to surprise; again,
again we find ourselves
poised to overstride infinity.

December 17 2010

There Are Snowflakes in Our House

There are snowflakes in our house
cut with a fancy stamper
they get into all sorts of things
turn up everywhere unexpected
and on some the youngest one has written
tiny messages
initials joined by plus signs
smiley faces
or hearts
so nice to see 
they do not melt
maybe I will find one in a shoe
to refresh my heart
next summer.

December 10 2010

The First of Winter

We are waiting for the snow
which may or may not fall
in flurries if at all;
meanwhile, we will go.
The forecast has been definitely tentative
for days, but there is something in this light,
as it strikes upon the white of houses
and makes the shadows shrink
to utter blackness in the crevices of granite walls,
that makes it seem most certain it will crystallize,
and fill the air around us with the first of winter,
silent,
like a blessing on us all.

December 5 2010

Nightstand (painting)

I found a pretty good paint program that somewhat emulates the look and feel of oil paint.

The Cataract

So I will steal this little time reflective,
mindful of the good and of the hurts
that I have had or have inflicted,
and by their light inspect the occult kernel of my life.
These rests are never long enough;
the gripping strain will come again to catch me
up in heaven's cataract
down which we boaters course;
but to that roaring water let me take,
so close to broken but not yet,
at least one realization,
how much this grinding strength is true
measure of the worth of what we're given,
and remember that, if just in part,
the coldness and the kindness of the world
are in, not it, but me.

November 24 2010

Daylight Saving

This time, it isn't coming back.
We had our second chance and now
we'll dress ourselves in darkness till the Spring.
At least we got to practice those old skills;
we know how to find a teeshirt's collar
and make it tell its front and back
through touch alone, and as for jeans, they're easy.
Much more difficult is separating sleep and waking:
so close, like eyes being shut or open in the dark;
it would be so simple
to put the wrong one on and go
out.

November 16 2010

There Comes a Point When You Must Take Out

There comes a point when you must take out
everything in your wallet. Cleaning out
the old receipts, the dirty bills,
the cash machine's reports of drain
makes something almost new again
of the emptied space in which is left
only what you want and must keep most
close to you. Your cards, your scraps,
your pieces of identity and all that's dear
are free to sleep,
protected by these walls,
unhectored by the gibber
of all the petty history that you were forced to gather.
Here, for one brief afternoon
or morning or a night, they and you may breathe
quietly, 
in this atmosphere of light
that has nothing in it to endow
but, for you and they, the simple blessing of the now. 

November 13 2010

As To a Church I Come

As to a church I come to this door;
left behind my dear young family,
their treasured secular strife a momentary murmur,
no interruption to my prayer in an upward gaze
to a silent night in which a single star
regards me as quietly as the voice
that I imagine I would hear
if ever I heard His.

November 6 2010

The Late Young Dandelions

She thwarted the late young dandelions
by picking and placing their heads
yellow in a row
in the space between two planks
of the deck step.
Their purple bulbous cousins,
would-be natives of the next projected spring,
she elevated one above;
but in the morning,
after last night's first hard frost especially,
they all were withered
soon to disappear--if lucky, to be re-picked by a wind
and placed
where rot can do the most good. 
This is only what we should expect
and hope for, that there will always be
such flowers to be sacrificed
to a childish sense of ornament and order
wherever we may live.
 
November 1 2010

For Weeks I Saw You Dancing

For weeks I saw you dancing with the moon;
Then at the full you began to pull away.
Now I see you lonely in the dark;
have you learned nothing from your wanderings? 

October 28 2010

Contentment Lives

The youngest knows
how to carry scissors
and corrects me
when I say yeah.
Contentment lives
in small things
like her.

October 20 2010

One Perspective On a Fall

The last of summer has a light
that's like no other; autumn's appetite
has eaten half its color. What's left
is like the garden stalks that imitate
their fruitful days, standing tall
but hollow.

The yard still harbors ancient, injured toys;
too young, but they will not outgrow
or even feel the need for older
though they barely fit
on plastic meant for babies.

The season too's outgrown;
the wind politely sweeping out the trees
waits patient our departure.
On this last of days outside,
we mimic summer till,
the chairs upturned, the lighting dimmed,
we realize that it's only us 
and leave the empty lawn for home,
ushered by the dark.

October 17 2010

How Should We Remember the Strong

How should we remember the strong?
There were not many who had her wit,
and that angular grace
she used to deliver her homely truths
was only hers. We will not forget her,
or that fiercest face
whose challenge was to hardship,
and whose welcome gave to life
and love
and laughter
each, in sparkling eyes
that will not die,
a warm and honored place.

October 14 2010

Bound to Me

Bound to me like a data source you
fill my empty fields with meaning
otherwise
all page no content is my fate.

October 9 2010

There Is No Grey Exactly Like

There is no grey exactly like
that which ocean houses wear
on sunless days.

Salt wind has no business with
these walls we made,
long since cleaned of color by the storms.
Instead, it strips the paint
from beaches, sky, and waves;
and gulls,
dragged like brushes past the clouds,
barely tint the quiet with their toneless brays.

When we are down to grey,
we still have this
shingle, sea, and street,
simple and concrete.
What is left survives.

September 25 2010

Everything Is More or Less

Everything is more or less
back where it belongs.
The summer drought wrought havoc on
the summer lawns
but they are mostly green again.
The structures that we coded still hold flaws
destined to surprise us,
but for at least the weekend they are plausible.
The river's calm is offering
itself to be reflected
in any passer-by.

This present moment, filled with gratitude,
is to be kept,
a scrap of paper
tucked into a pocket.
We are thankful for the ending of the storms
that bent us sideways
and of the tides that tried
to send us out to sea, and at my side
the ancient dog survives,
pulled forward by his nose
though his legs must lag behind.

September 19 2010

She Gave You Her Heart to Hold

She gave you her heart to hold
just for the night,
and in your palm it lay,
a comfort stone,
until the monsters left.

Before you went to sleep
you put it on the table
to keep it from a fall.
How careful is the child
of a mother's given heart.

September 3 2010

Catch and Release

Catch and release
not just your fish;
unhook as well
and let swim free
your finny thoughts.

September 3 2010

And I Was Given a Night

And I was given a night in which peace lay
across my heart like a dog across my bed.
And I knew if I woke I would feel its weight
pressing down the quiet dark next to me.
And I knew if I turned on the light I would see
its limpid eyes watching, waiting, guarding until day.

August 13 2010

New England Wall

There is a world of sweat locked up in that rock.
Walls don't build themselves. That glacial piece
cost some poor farmer and a horse a day,
or maybe more, to haul it from its gritty bed
protesting all the way from there to here,
not far at all, but more than long enough
to make them bone-tired, soaked, and dizzy
with the strain; and still, it's big, but
only one, and who knows how many cousins wait
beneath the farther grass (and will they ever get
the planting done?) to make them do it all again.

August 13 2010

In a Hard Day

In a hard day air conditioning
is small but needed comfort. A needle
keeping to the midrange promises
safe return to home.

There, they will tell you of their triumph
in the parking lot, where two wheels apiece
are finally enough to carry both of them
around, around, around.

And you will listen, tired, still thinking,
to their voices and the sound
of you yourself decelerating
slowly to a stop.

August 11 2010

There Is a Burning Light

There is a burning light
toward which we all may turn
and some will trudge
while others fly.
Let us to the slowest walkers
say excelsior
and let the beating of our glowing wings
not leave them far behind.

August 11 2010

On Writing and Raptors

The animal waits;
a god
a bowl
a wind
a sigh.
It contradicts
breaks through
reveals
denies.

The hanging hawk is calling high.
A neutral sky
hides an upper plane.
The mate is wheeling
keeping company as she
cries suspended
in a search for something
wanted but unknown:
a meal
a child
a home
to farther fly.

Below, the work continues;
quietly, doggedly pursuing only
the requirements of this moment,
deliberately not waiting,
not looking,
unable not to hope.

The animal watches. When
will its caution subside, when
will it show itself, allow
the page to capture it;
and when will the hawks
be given their desire?

August 19 2010

I Would Not Walk that Path

I would not walk that path without you,
but when I do, I'll walk it with you,
and you will be that manic friend
who raced from hill to hill at our command;
that studious detective who could trace
the days-old scent of others down the sandy trail;
that follower like a faithful moon
whose looping orbit I always felt
behind me or before, a gentle tidal pull
of loyalty on my heart. And we will go
together all the way, to where it opens out
from trees to marshland and the channels
leading to the sea.

July 30 2010

Consider the Joy

Consider the joy with which we do things well;
a quiet sense, no cause for leaping,
more akin to peace. The new made bed;
the laundry done; the dinner cooked
with nothing late or missing.
The child, for once, guided, not rebuked,
and a dog well taken care of;
an honest conversation.

Such small pieces of a life,
assembled with a care
that speaks of their importance,
and in the speaking, calm.

These things are more a poetry
than many words that rhyme. They scan
with rhythms of divinity, repeat
unspeakable perfections of a beating heart,
and sing
the silent song of everything.

July 28 2010

Initiation

Once through the wall, we came upon a scene of great initiation.
Under a kindly sun, excited parents introduced children to Mother Ocean,
celebrating birth at the ancient verge from which they came,
while female elders calmly sat, observant as they talked
of the rite and sudden seagulls wheeling
attendant on offerings, away from grasping profane hands,
before the dark knifeblades of the breaking wavelets at the altar shore
where men and sons and daughters washed in joy
and bright ceremonial shovels lay near hollows dug to reach the center
on the hallowed sand.

July 23 2010

They Are Going To Seem

They are going to seem
so impossibly young
and I will be there
not here. How distant
will that sunshine feel
when I am old
and they are grown;
how small these windows.
Even now I cannot pass through;
imagine my wrinkled hand
reaching
for that ancient summer.

Let me be as wise
as I will try to be today
and live inside the frame
of each photographic moment
I am given.

July 20 2010

A Dog's Unthought Acceptance

The whys surround;
the murmuring crowd of shiftless hangers-on;
mosquitoes darting at the skin,
sending foreign agents in
infecting blood already tired and ill;
thinning purpose and aspirating will.

This prayer God does not fulfil:
An end to question
and in its place release,
the greatest gift, a simple peace,
given without stint to every pup
but not to us, whose humanness
since Eden bars us from that primal grace,
condemned, in a sense, by appetite
to want but not embrace
a dog's unthought acceptance of this life.

July 19 2010

It Was Painted There Like Yesterday

It was painted there like yesterday across the sky
as if Mr. Roosevelt had finally hired
poor artists to re-create in mural memory
of families driving across America
under spectacular summer clouds
to places arrived at after hours of alphabet:
Get out and stretch,
past wooden signs and into trees
where on the sultry trail
each shadowed step refracts exactly
childhood recollection of such sandy places, where the pine
holds in its fractured bark the promise
of strange campsites and the scent,
dreamlike as your own family in this foreign place,
of hot dogs, smoke, and insect spray.

Having disposed of all the trash,
I drove back to the present from the sky.

July 12 2010

Inhumanity to Flora

The cruelest vegetable torture:
hanging baskets on a covered porch
in summer
inches from the rain.

July 10 2010

How

How people die, and are reborn;
how we meditate
and mediate
and eat.
How we hunger.
How everyone needs a bed.
How the inexpressible demands to be said.
How daylight becomes despair
and seasons of wanting become a life of loss
and how we pray and hear nothing
and gain a momentary strength
and fall
and still remain. How we spin
each in our planetary orbit
and transmit signals to each other
of reassurance and of hate, and still
keep circling our common sun.
How small our data,
how great our wish for more,
how comforting belief,
how hardly gained. How plain
our passage to delight and pain,
and how
little can or must be
ever said.

July 14 2010

The Hillside Is No Longer Mowed

The hillside is no longer mowed;
I remember when it was closely clipped.
Meticulous, he roamed the lawn,
his only apparent task
day by day and day.

Now I see the flowers and the grass
nodding down the shaded slope
and wonder if their quiet growth
declares a faithful reaper
has gone home.

July 12 2010

Private Lightning

Private lightning,
beyond the blackened cutouts of houses and their trees,
illicit magic in the independent sky;
and you, still possibly awake
but maybe finally near sleep across my knees,
must catch no inkling from my surreptitious gaze
that what you hoped to see is blooming bright
outside your bedroom window.

July 4 2010

The Weight of Water

The weight of water
bows the branches
dragged down by their leaves
they make a dark and misted tunnel
one good squeeze
as from a chimp's great hand
would relieve them of their burden
and springing back
they would let the droplets fly
back to heaven
and the sky
might give some back to me.

June 17 2010

Everything You Hear You Sing

Everything you hear you sing;
is that not high praise? Who would not
make music of reality?
True, you sometimes find quite different notes
from those you seek, but I have heard
that errors open up new paths
new songs
new life. Take this from me:
Practice always as you go; enjoy,
or do not do; and claim as your most precious right
that you may sing
and fail
and sing again.

June 11 2010

The Wind Blew In

The wind blew in like glory
and the trees put down their hands
and the children in the yard
were at a loss
so we went shopping.
There in the aisles we had no knowledge of
the deal that was made in the atmosphere
for the storm to pass us by
and when we wheeled our carts outside
the sky looked still to us
like expectation.

June 9 2010

Remember the Running Giraffe

Remember the running giraffe you saw and knew
that God was real? Remember
its rocking stride, that catenary neck
whose arc flexed gracefully
with each silent step? Remember
the impossible sunlight and
the endless grass relieved by thorny trees
before commanding cloud and distant
darkened curtains of the blessing rain?

To that waking day when you were born
my thoughts are tied; now, when shelter takes priority
and blows repeat, and even dying seems distinct,
I yearn to call, and in your hearing ear
repeat this question:
Do you remember your African God,
and have you lately asked His aid?
Even here in cages you may find,
in long-lashed eyes above,
that He remembers you.

May 26 2010

We Find Ourselves Here

We find ourselves here in the middle course,
and sometimes we would ask no more
than to be given to the margin
where a clear and certain boundary sets
a limit on the world.
But these banks are passed by active lives;
they are sticking points, used and useful
just for rest and to contain and shape
the roiling flow at either side.
Push off joyfully or with regret:
Our path must be to complicate,
accept the ceaseless milling of the stream:
not birth, not death; not great, not small;
nor good, nor bad, nor black, nor white--
living happens only in between.

May 19 2010

I Found Your Wishes

I found your wishes on the floor:
notes to hope, which we were never meant to see.
I read them, I admit,
your fears and fleeting aspirations,
with accepted guilt, as parents do.
But though you let them fall, I knew
they still were secret,
so put them back where they belong,
beneath your dreaming pillow;
and this I'll tuck beneath my own,
that you, my dearest wish,
will likewise stay
till you come true.

May 19 2010

A First Communion Day

Rain that falls on a First Communion day
reminds us of their christening.
These puddles that we splash through
on our way to get the cake
might be baptismal fonts
for other kinds of children.
The trees like verdant sponges overhang
the street, dark with promise
and heavy with this water,
ready to bless our unsuspecting SUVs
if a godly wind so moves them;
and now we remember the waking dawn,
how the rain knocked on our windows and
thunder like a voice reminded us
that it was time to rise.

May 8 2010

I'll Show You the End Of the Ocean

I'll show you the end of the ocean, you said,
but not to me. I'm too old to see
where the waves come from; too old to willingly
suspend my disbelief,
crawl under the blanket archway
of your realm and sail
across the wooden sea on hands and knees
grown painful with my weight and age,
too busy ironing
the wrinkles out of life for you,
too near the end to take the time grown precious
from my busy days whose minutes shrink
proportionately to the sum of years
whose corridor rings with echoes that will keep
my ears from hearing what you offer
to your sister, or
so you possibly may think.

May 4 2010

God Willing, I Will Spend Today

God willing, I will spend today
not trying to reach conclusions.
Its riches all around me lie,
in need of no decision.
Three cardinals that flit across the street
into the trees
are self-sufficient;
the blossoms and the branches
don't require me.
My God is more a hoped-for God
than present,
but if he is and wills,
I will wait upon this day
to show me in its way
how to be,
and with this I will be
and be content.

April 24 2010

Oh If I Could Give You That Ungainly Gift

Oh if I could give you that ungainly gift
what useful answers might spill out
as you tried your best to carefully unpack
its richness. Look, oh
you lost one. Never mind;
one secret I can tell is that
there is always more to discover and
the box is never empty.

April 25 2010

Sleep a Little Longer

Is this quite what you expected?
We can talk sometime about the dreams
you had, there in the pulsing dark
where you first learned
a silent song of movement
and your mother's heart.
For now, you must adjust
to vision and the rush of moments
that you waited for not knowing
that you waited. If
it's all a bit too much,
take comfort in her touch
and sleep a little longer, child,
upon her breast;
The world will wait for you.

April 22 2010

Welcome to Lillian Persson

Worry Stone

The world gave me this worry stone
ready polished and fitted to my hand,
long ago, like an unfamiliar uncle
folding my fingers gently over it
and patting them,
whispering confidentially,
"Keep this; you may need it."
Polite if callow nephew,
I did not say what I believed,
that worry stones have never worked for me,
but kept instead the stone inside my pocket
like a promise; and in truth
its easy weight
and light-veined surface in the dark
have comforted my hand.

April 21 2010

An Almond Moon

An almond moon is in the sky.
Down here, a certain weariness pervades;
a sadness of the soul that sits in judgment on
a day it is good to just be past.
It left a quotient of despair,
arrived at by division of the world
into myself and all the rest.
What is that cruel divisor,
and whose the hand that set the sum?
Is it a subtle test by an examiner
to check my understanding?
If true, I'll take the failing grade
in trade for sleep--and that, above,
small benediction whose impassive face
is in this tedious circumstance
an unexpected, insufficient, but
still welcome grace.

April 12 2010

Once I Knew the Branches of a Tree

Once I knew the branches of a tree
as she does.
Once I knew the better hold for my left hand
than that one;
knew the place where my right foot would fit
and lift me to the seat of limbs,
a living cage commanding earth and sky,
and felt no wonder that I knew.
That is home: to understand the where and how
and why, each detail,
and never need to question.

April 5 2010

Let's Talk About Souls

Let's talk about souls being incorruptible.
Let's consider for a moment what that means.
Do you understand that there may be a party
at any moment in heaven to welcome
the newest member of that band?
There is not time for solemnity
in the face of such radiant joy;
all that is lacking is your joining in
to sing and shout and laugh
as she comes trucking in.
Play your bugle, old Gabriel.
Play your harps, you hangers-on.
Keep your rhythm, try your best to keep up:
An angel of laughter and friendship
has finally come home.

April 5 2010

For Sue Spratt

Steps for a Successful Spring

Brush the red across the trees
lightly as a veil.
Blot with yellow the forsythia
and let the ducks in puddles play--
but send away the ungracious rain
and give the birds instruction in their song,
to make their welcome bright and sure
to capture fickle Spring.

April 2 2010

They Wasted No Time

They wasted no time in making it look like summer out here.
Like the hardy crocuses,
their plastic golf clubs multiply,
and with sidewalk chalk
they made new colors bloom
on surfaces that lately lay in snow.

The new moon holds a promise in its cup
that as the dusk proceeds
reveals itself to be of Earth.
Gazing, I am stupefied,
as the smoke from Spring's first offering
rises toward the sky.

March 19 2010

As Morning's Dark Alarm Required

As morning's dark alarm required
I used to rise,
put on my old dysfunctions,
and walk him down the street.

His pattering claws ticktapped in counterpoint
to the squeaking of one shoe.
I considered the closing of my eyes to be
a safe alternative to wakefulness:
Surely my young dog would lead me
where I had to go.

Now, when shadows overlay
each other and the street,
and rolling, down the hill,
the ocean utters in the dark
a highway's thunder,
quiet but unending,
I remember in my bed.

What separates our past from now?
How far do we ever overstride
our disabilities? Those treasured steps
that brought us here can be retraced
without our knowing,
till once again we find that we walk blindly,
wearing what we thought we left behind.

Let us in our separate hearts
each thank and prize these weary days we travel,
for the teaching they provide us
and the distance they divide us
from the less we used to be.

March 17 2010

There Is Something I Forgot To Tell You

There is something I forgot to tell you,
and I would not have had you leave
until I said it;
but since with your accustomed practicality
you have stolen this last march,
I'll say it here and trust that you'll receive it.

Never, by the way,
was there a man who spoke so constantly as you
no more than was needed; a man
who once stood on a Pacific shore,
immaculate in tans,
and greeted his own sweating brother
in the war, with what I hear
was a fine reserve (gilded, I imagine, by
an eloquent, ironic silence,
and of course that smile--you know the one I mean--
that hints at so much more that could be said,
if only it were not
so needless).

But now you see me at a loss:
Of much you taught, I learned your silence least
yet loved it possibly the best;
and I should honor you today
with quiet, not these words.
At least I can stand mute,
as sorrow certainly desires--
and you, I think,
already know
what I forgot to say.

March 18 2010

In memory of Pearson Stewart

I See Her Running into Happiness

I see her running into happiness.
Let, if it is not too much to ask, her golden hair entrain
each of these my doubts and misperceptions and,
drawing their dark threads from where I stand
here on the beach, pull them into nothingness
without her even knowing as she goes.

Certainly this is more
than one should ask a child,
but you know it is also right to look
for aid and to admit
the limits of our powers. Here,
on sand that sinks beneath her toes,
I see a saving force whose grace
is surely, if there's any in this world,
from God, whose strength is limitless
and lends itself with no restraint
so she may run,
and take me with her.

March 4 2010

We Start at Random

We start at random because
there is no better place.
The first marks that we scratch
upon the world are bold
or tentative, but lacking any grace.
Only as we grow do we acquire
the knowledge of what works and what
can safely be consigned to fire.

March 1 2010

We Are Not Fully Born Until

We are not fully born until:

the last dream drops away
pretend is not a magic word
we fly no more in sleep

and slowly we perceive
that sometime in our rational days
we woke

and will not sleep again until

February 25 2010

An Explosion of Sudden Starlings

An explosion of sudden starlings takes us
slightly by surprise.
We did not expect them to appear
near here for weeks; but then,
this does explain why all the bushes speak.

Half align along the wire;
the rest fly farther into fog.
A row, a cloud; they take the forms
that suit each circumstance.
But I have barely time to wonder at their being here,
when looking up, I see that they are gone.

February 25 2010

The Crow Flies Low

The crow flies low,
an unexpected traveler
across a road that smaller wings
and hurrying things
normally patrol.

Its prize is only a feeder seed,
certainly a poor result,
but maybe at this winter's end
appropriate
and anyway something for
an empty craw.

It is hard to dislike a bird
that takes fortune where it finds it.
Maybe there's complaint, but who would not?
And never was a crow who cawed
when food was to be found
or in its beak.

February 19 2010

Before a Forecast Storm

They plane in toward the wire and then are lost,
but as we pass, their chuckling voices comment
on our passing.

So far I have seen tomorrow
in only a flake or two.

At the field, blue tufts of fur on the frozen ground
suggest without sound a death
here or near here. He takes no notice:
even scent is silent.

In this waiting calm,
squirrels are ubiquitous.
The quiet draws them out
to run across their rooftops,
unregarded by the passing cars.

Upstanding limbs of trees are bare and still
to let the winter pass from cloud to ground.

Another tree speaks noisily
about sparrows it conceals
in green.

We walk uphill through light that makes us,
like the sky and yards and houses,
luminous.

Looking out of doors I see
it still has not begun.

February 10 2010

It Is a Pleasure To Be Washed Up On This Sand

It is a pleasure to be washed up on this sand.
With each sip I marvel yet again. How, precisely,
did I elude those rocks that I had placed
to sink me, and ride rough currents,
channeled by those obstacles and
designed to crush in bewildering night,
to here?

It will not bear looking at--and yet again,
it may. Let me glance aside and let
internal eyes capture and contain
this miracle for my own posterity.

Meanwhile, I will struggle up the strand
to where the exotic trees stand
ready for my building, in anticipation of
your coming home.

February 4 2010

It Is a Quiet Loneliness

It is a quiet loneliness of the flesh
that may sometimes come sidling in,
behind the groceries,
unnoticed in the updating of lists,
and taking the farthest back seat
where the rearview mirror cannot see,
each time that we pick up or drop off.

At such times, it is a painful victory
to wake, to realize this unwanted guest,
and then I would wrap you to myself
like your warm blanket; I would hold
your precious head to mine, and fill
with its curves and hollows
my empty palms and fingers, telling you
and no one else that missing you
is more than loneliness can bear.

February 4 2010

When Making Stars

When making stars for your daughter,
it is important to be careful.
Try and retry as needed the initial folds,
but remember that mistakes can be recovered.
Understand that where the paper ends
is not the end; ends can be adjusted.
Force no point to grow by hasty pressure of
your thumbnail on the side. Trust
that you will find a giving place,
and that the star will grow with only
guidance from your hand.

January 26 2010

Flowers On a Table

In transition from one
frustration to the next,
I see that you have left
on the table
flowers,
whose portrait I wish I could paint.
Thank you.

January 26 2010

How And Why We Go Down

How and why we go down
regardless, sometimes we go down.
You know the fall: how dark,
how desperate,
how long.

Sometimes
we even ask the fall
to rescue us from
unguarded heights,

but other times
the fall commands, and who then
truly stands?

But if you fall,
if you cannot hear me call to say
that you will climb back up one day, at least
I would throw down flowers;

I would throw down flowers
if it is all I can do;
I would throw down flowers
for you.

January 15 2010

The Shadows of a Tree

In the wind shadow of this tree,
the ground is bare.
In the sun shadow of this tree,
the snow remains.
One tree,
two shadows.
And the image I remember
makes a third.

January 9 2010

On a Snowy Hill

They go down the hill
not knowing
this sled's the one I gave you
thirty years ago
not knowing
they'd be going down this hill
today.

January 9 2010

Jake the Fly

I haven't met Jake the fly
and frankly hope I don't.
She found his sister Francine
in the bathroom
dead
today
and together we returned her
to the earth with tears and prayer.

If I met Jake
tonight or tomorrow,
what could I possibly do or say?

January 3 2010

The Soldier Left

The soldier left
to start his tour of duty
while the snow fell,
leaving family and friends.
For a long time he had lived at home
building and tending
keeping his appointed rounds
and, recently,
remembering,
till now he was ready to serve again.

Next day the snow
fell from trees and telephone wires
on yards and streets
past the windows of those
he left behind
gently
quietly
peacefully.

In memory of Jim O'Brien

January 1 2010