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