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