Untitled 3/19/2012

It is not a watchword to remember,
not a mantra.
It is a vision that you found
around a turning in the trail,
of the ending of a trail
at a place you had not seen since childhood;
of a finally permissible rewinding
to a clear and happy state
of early grace, and of unexpected understanding
that the way is somehow clear,
and a waking in the heart
like morning, or a gentle coming home.

March 19 2012

Finn and Blanket

The Wind Brought This

The wind brought this, a singing day,
to us to live with ease.
Wings populate the trees
with children's chatter.
Nothing is their matter
but to report returning life,
the sheathing of winter's knife,
and in it all, the bounding dogs will play.

March 8 2012

Finn on a Blanket

Finn in a Blanket

It Was So Awakening

It was so awakening
in the fragile returning sun for him, I knew.
The detail of the dazzling shallow running water 
and the sand and shell beneath, I saw,
and the thrilling of his senses
in his  intimate examination of the marsh grass
warm, and rich with heady odors of the thaw
was also mine. 

How the unfamiliar brightness remembers for us
the rapture of the small,  
the focus down to these few early blades
and the pebbles in the stunning newborn light
and the staggering ants that crawl beneath,
new citizens of a rediscovered world,
too dazed, like us, to more than stand and breathe.

March 2 2012

All the Boats

All the boats are grounded in the harbor;
their masts are spectral lines
revealing the morning's composition
to those who can read God's mind.

The turning screws of the incoming wavelets;
the overlapping folds of the incoming wavelets,
like napkins laid neatly on the table of the shore;
the minor ridges of the incoming wavelets
that run beneath the water's dimples,
lifting them up
lowering them down
and leaving them behind;

nothing here's extraneous
except possibly a man and his dog.
Left alone, this place becomes
a demonstration of, and quiet meditation on
necessity, which orders everything in its reach
and lies beneath, the silent meaning
of this stony beach.

February 7 2012

The Night I Came to See You Go

The owl flew over my head the night 
I came to see you go,
and I have a memory of a fleeting fox
running from my lights, that may be incorrect.
While the helper hovered in my old room
I laid my hand on the broad arch of a back
I had always known was strong enough to carry the weight 
of any dark--but not perhaps the one in which
you had been so long asleep,
and where you no longer breathed.
Did you know that you were going?
When they carried you steeply down the angled stair
I was afraid in silent light infused with the color black,
and we would not have let you go 
out that New England company front door
like a stranger after an awkward visit,
except that the efficiency of your bearers
was not to be denied. 
How often since then have I recollected
and wondered where you were. It has never seemed
to me that you are gone; always I feel your distant regard
from a place I cannot see. Perhaps it is the same to which
they have retreated in both time and memory, invisible,
your guides and friends, the owl and the fleeting fox.

January 26 2012

There Are Fortunes Scattered

There are fortunes scattered through this house
on floors and counters and this desk.
After the cardboard containers were put away
we read the cryptic mottoes and predictions
and fed half the cookies to the wagging dog.
We shared our fortunes with each other;
I gave them mine and received
others in return. One child became the keeper
but her stock of paper strips is incomplete:
too many to keep up with and so they stay,
spread abroad in crannies after reading
so that anyone may find a fortune anywhere.
It is good to be so generous 
with each other and with these our given fates.

January 14 2012

Forward Lunge

We passed the wrinkled toe of a respectable tree
at the outermost point of a marathon march
intended to wear out the dog.
He paid it no improper attention,
being focused on easily beating the challenge
he had no knowledge of.
And as he strained the leash along the boardwalk over the bog,
the dog gave the squabbling ducks no more
than courtesy's inspection.
The overhead geese in their ragged vees 
were beneath his regard; only other dogs and people
and peculiar smells rated a brief diversion;
otherwise, it was only the forward lunge
he hungered for, toward whatever lay ahead,
to desperately want, to call, to reach, to catch,
to eat, and to chase again.

January 3 2012

First Night, Boston

The prospect of rain kept some people away
while others put on their raincoats of decision
but the end of the tip
of one fin of a fish 
made of ice 
was involved in its own dissolution.
Each drop of itself was a private goodbye 
to the public display of its crystalline form--
no looking back, a hurrying down
to form on the ground 
a fluid new resolution.

December 31 2011

Eve of Battle

The generalship of peace is left
to those who can't control it.
On any given day
its forces
are in utter disarray
each captain thinking only of its unit
and communications are usually down.
Even now they are all sleeping
on the eve of one great battle
in the year's campaign.
Who guards these quiet camps?
There are no sentinels,
so certainly now the enemy could rush in.
But they are surrounded by a silent field of stars
and nothing now will wake them
till the sun's rise sounds their reveille.
And will they meet the charge?
Anger, pride, hypocrisy
the adversary flings
to burst among their ranks,
and from the cynical deceiver
no mercy is expected.
And will they meet the charge,
this weak battalion? Will gentle weapons
grasped in honorable hands
suffice to meet the charge?
Wait the morning, let it come;
let all the sleepers rise
and with life's desperate persistence
make ready to defend the hearts
they're sworn to celebrate in love
and let them meet the charge.

December 25 2011

Deer in the Brush

They can't really be that silent.
My dog must have heard them,
though maybe he only scented,
or saw that quick flick of a white tail
grey in the dusk behind the neighbor's house.
One brief impression of body and hock 
and they were gone, but 
the poor dog's hoarse frustration
couldn't erase their lingering quiet, 
so still,
as though they were moving in a dream
(but whether theirs or mine,
I cannot tell).

December 23 2011

To a Younger Daughter

I do not chide the rose
for wearing its heavy scent
and dusky red
so languidly upon its stem.
I do not reprimand volcanoes
for sending tears of lava
down their rocky cheeks,
and tigers of necessity
must hunt.
Why, then, should your honest lamentations
anger me? You are a thorny flower,
eruptive, and hungry as only a cat can be,
but you are truthful in your rage.
You owe a debt to age
which you will pay, no doubt, begrudgingly,
but do not let the manners of maturity
cover quite completely 
all that wildness you possess.
It is something with which you are blessed
and with it you may conquer
fear
or all
or even
a single fortunate heart.

December 20 2011

Another Christmas Pageant

So many hidden tears are wrung
from the simple sight of these few children,
the very Bibles of a faith 
they do not understand, but live. 
Here are your churches and your synagogues;
truly, Allahu Akbar: God is great,
in even the smallest things.

December 11 2011

Wait

It is amazing how things wait.
Soap on a dish
stones
plates in the cupboard of an empty house
the sun in its unimagined immensity
undiscovered oil
and tools in the basement.
All these things I would emulate
to own their limitless calm
if not for the troublesome detail of humanity
that tethers me to restlessness and impatience. 
But oh how that unsought link
conducts the warmth of all those others
calling their message of green and growing life
for the sharing of which with me 
they are prepared 
to wait.

December 9 2011

Sedimeditation

I am in favor of building things slowly
and of things that slowly build.
I admire sedimentary rock, 
though some call it weak
because it cleaves along the plane of deposition.
But the way it gradually accretes
at the riverine pace of geological necessity
speaks to me of patience and accomplishment.
Let others of my kind be igneous;
I will labor on, 
recording and protecting
every layering of life
and building, 
always building
toward the sun.
Only when I am stone and fossilized
may any curious finally pry apart
my ancient strata
to read what they preserve.

December 5-18 2011

I do realize it's an awful title. Feel free to suggest something more dignified.

For Helen

She seemed like a chrysalis
the last time I saw her,
or maybe a nest,
with her paper skin and floating hair
and delicate, twig-like bones;
something, at any rate,
that held a lively Nature's child
in a fragile, temporary shell.
And her voice was a bird's,
which signifies flight;
so I must have known, considering these clues,
that soon she would show the world those feathered limbs
that bore her up, along with those who knew her,
through one hundred delighted years;
and that she would further rise,
with a smiling gentleness that was hers alone,
to who knows where
happy, on brilliant wings.

December 1 2011

Inscription on a Headstone

Born, lived, died,
happy, cried,
kept body and soul together.
Now they're apart;
take heart:
heaven's forever.

Sorry to be morbid; I've just had this jingling around in my head for years as a fun thing to put on a tombstone. (Depends on how you define "fun," of course.)

December 1 2011

Fog Relieves the Distance

Fog relieves the distance of its weight.
Only the near has clear significance.

Close things are the total of your morning;
everything else is just the sleep that you were woken from.

The sun alone can burn away your dreams
and leave their inspiration.

November 28 2011

The Bones

Throw down the sack of rattling bones.
Let it tear;
let the mandibles and fibulas,
tarsals, metatarsals, and patellas,
pelvises and sacrums,
carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges
clatter loud across the black stone floor
that paves this quiet night.

My soul is not an ossuary;
no catacomb's niches here,
stuffed with the skulls of forgotten men.
If anything, it should be a basement swept broom-clean,
occupied only by the necessary furnace of my life
and the tools and toys and seasonal items needed
for a house in working order and capable
of something close to joy.

This is my aspiration, which I will not clench
in a miserly fist, but will release to fall,
to break,
and from the wreck of these old bones
a bird of peace will fly.

November 23 2011

You Will Be With Us

You will be with us into Winter;
you will taste the snow.
Spring will find you quickening with us,
dazed by the wind and sun.
Summer will stretch you out across the boards
momentarily, until the hunt resumes,
and Fall again will waken memories
of old paths scented and forgotten.

You do not need to notice this circle;
your nose is tracking the moment.
But you may be surprised at the ease with which
the stealthy seasons send their changes in
and deliver to you a subtle prey:
Unmasked, this formerly alien place 
will wear, if Sirius is willing,
the unmistakable savor, ready to your jaws, of home.

November 16 2011

Cathedral

Along the path
the chorus of birches strains to the sky
praising the blue in which they mingle,
leafless,
shriven for winter,
offering their very bodies to the sun
that lights them with a holy fire,
white
in their secret cathedral.

November 6 2011

Stacking Rocks

Someone is stacking

                 stones
                   on
                 stones
in this field of stones,

possibly simply to perplex,
or maybe they are minor art,
expressing balance
and implying impermanence.

The dog does not know them,
and I am careful only to
not let his leash upend them.
Soon enough the wind or water will displace,
return them to their scattered homes
in the background uniformity of uniquely rounded rocks.
The significance of these stones is small,
whether spread apart or stacked. In fact,
the only thing that matters is whose hand
has placed them where. A person tells us
"I am here," but the world says only
"Here, I am."

October 31 2011

Another New England Wall

Downward deep these rocks would drive
into darkness if the soil would let them;
but this practical New England ground 
knows what it's doing. Walls would be no use below;
stone and stick, trash and clay, 
and sand must all sustain them. They
are needed here above, not only to delineate
but to remind each walker and each driver by
of what the bones of earth personify:
the weight of patience,
the burden of belief in fortitude,
and like the lichen slowly flowering across their faces, 
the irresistible advance of glacial time's
long journey toward redemption.

October 28 2011