Budding

Budding is the bated breath,
the wait you want extended
so that flowers will be always still to come.
Once the blooms have broken out
you know their falling follows,
and no serene remembering
that spring will come again can render
ending this beginning any sweeter.

April 26 2014

Home Harbor

Who knows, we might run without heartache down
the final reach of this cruise;
might anchor without incident at our home harbor,
and ferry ashore to look up old friends.
Ship decommissioned, or laid up in drydock,
we might walk the sand of our last retirement
at the water, not on it,
but where we can see its blue remembrance
and hear the echoes of its ancient history
bringing back the images without injury
of storms survived and dreary days
of labor passed, hands overboard, the groundings;
and all at last comprehended,
stowed where they belong,
forgiven and forgiving
as we fall asleep at night.

April 9 2014

Expectant

Here sits the dog, expectant,
tail ablur, eyes moist with hope.
Who would not give such a friend
his biscuit?

April 5 2014

At Five O'Clock

At five o'clock
I love the fog
that floats inside
the neck 
of my bottle
of beer.

March 14 2014

Frost Heaves

They were broken, broken,
so broken by the winter;
but roads were not the only things that suffered:
our own loves too, and friends' friends
and family; broken, ended,
heaved by frost and then let go
in the treacherous melt, salted wounds
that crumbled into nothing. In the parking lot
someone stood a warning post in the sinkhole:
don't drive here, you'll fall. One more piece of evidence.
Things fail; they fatigue, and we tire with them,
each blow weakening until our theme is only
how can we sustain? What exactly are we waiting for?

I will answer, says the echo memory.
I will answer in the language of a sudden scent
on a wind that promises languor. We are waiting for
the great unlocking;
we are waiting for our shoulders finally to fall.
We are waiting for the day we stand outside, shirtsleeved,
letting the breeze and sun dispute,
and feel the warm liquidity of tears that wash
what used to be frozen into the lively mud.
We are waiting for the frogs to sing
at nightfall.

March 13 2014

Wreckage

I think I'm turning into John Masefield. I should count myself lucky, if so.

The sea puts all at odds on shore;
breaks the fragile fences, makes 
all walls a mockery, and takes
the things we try to build away
to fill some other coast it must repay.
Life's a ruin, says the ocean;
Life's a ruin, says the shore;
Life is built upon the wreckage,
say the seagulls,
of the things you built before.

March 11 2014

Bird on Wire

Bird on slanted wire.
One flirt of wing, then stillness.
Can morning teach peace?

August 13 2013

Pallid Spring

The flavor of pallid Spring is weak,
a tisane made of Winter grasses
steeped in snowmelt
and heated by a convalescent sun.
Such a wan conceit;
and finding nourishment in it
or in the Spring
is like searching for gems
on a pebble beach.

February 26 2014

The Rain Comes Down

The rain comes down
and down and down.
Some are blessed, 
and some may drown;
some must move 
to higher ground,
but all will feel its power.

February 26 2014

The Art of Finding Things

Sometimes all it takes is a kick
to turn the unsuspected stone in the gravel drive
and find its sapphire face, belonging in your mother's ring.
Remember Sherlock's adage and check the improbable.
Under can be high; look twice, but from different angles.
Suppose nothing; be of open mind, an eye without assumption.
Remember history, and spare one thought for Saint Anthony
if you do not happen to have him already
hanging beneath your shirt,
because his prayer for return of a stolen book was answered,
and the thief that was lost came penitent back to Orders.
Now Anthony is lost himself, but said to be found
in a higher place,
so he understands what happens.
Do not expect to regain everything;
faces in particular may never return in your lifetime,
but if you choose you may believe
that something else has found them, and in any case
no matter what you lost, or what disaster took,
it is usually somewhere,
and a rising lightness will be found with it
in the last place that you look.

February 6 2014

Tai Chi Bow

This poem is wrong in several ways: It started as a haiku, which is the wrong form for its Chinese subject matter; the poem exploded out of its haiku format; and the bow is not an essential component of all -- maybe even most -- forms of Tai Chi. Still, I think there's something valid remaining.

If you cannot bow
you can never do Tai Chi:
Humble is the dance.
Patient is the dance.
Quiet is the dance.
Watchful is the dance.

January 30 2014

Ways to Fly

There are different ways to fly.
Most common is the conventional launch
from one's livingroom carpet
into the air past the Christmas tree
and towards but over the piano.
The problem with this approach, of course,
is the gradual settling, the loss of lifting power
that lands you eventually on the same rough rug
you left, too soon.
More sustainable is the powerful leap
that sends you vaulting over obstacles
from gravestones to cars
in a headlong rush with you inhabiting the air
much longer than there is any reason to believe you can.
And of course in rare cases there is antigravity,
the machine version with the tunable knob
that is more strictly floating than flying
and which leaves you vulnerable to turning upside down
or flapping helplessly unable to reach the glass walls
of your container.
All of these have virtue and an end;
we regret their disappearance, but we welcome their return
on a night when we do not predict it but greet it
as an unexpected liberation, a freeing of our saddened souls
from the grounding weight of fear that ties us
firmly to the floor.

January 10 2014

Spring Memory

The morning birds are rioting
outside; they're trashing the dawn.
Any minute they may launch a song
straight through the plate glass
window of my sleep
to loot my dreams.

January 2 2014

Assistance

Old man;
old dog;
old truck.
He lifts him in.

December 29 2013

A Principle of Dreams

One clear principle of dreams
is that one thing leads to another.
Therefore, do not dream of cats,
to prevent the appearance of tigers.
Cellars are much larger and darker than they first appear
when you venture down the stairs.
Likewise, if you visit your old college campus
you will find that it stretches further
with more unfamiliar buildings
the farther you go to find the classes
for which you have no schedule.
Rather, dream of apricots,
which may lead to thoughts of fruit in general
and proceed to tangerines;
or of baskets, which tend to hold good bread;
or lightning, which can stimulate
thoughts of safety and of home,
where an absent friend is waiting
to hear you tell your dream.

December 18 2013

Stained Concrete 2 (Manna Rising)

Stained Concrete

Love Needs

Love needs 
to see love
in eyes it loves 
to be love,
or it is just 
the feel of
love, but never
real love.

December 3 2013

Fox and Hound

That fox was a while ago,
but still it lingers here,
amid all the wrack, the scent of a wreck
that only his nose can see.
Too faint, thank God, for rolling in,
but still the remembered mystery:
what it was, 
where it is,
and why he may not follow.

November 21 2013

The Heartened Shell

As when the fever breaks
and you are tired, clean, and empty;
you walk out from your house into a field
and the wind upholds you.
You recognize the sun from long ago
and the water from the grasses bathes your feet.
All these gentle affirmations grace
the fragile part that hopes to strengthen,
and you bring the heartened shell of you
back home, and throw the windows open.

November 18 2013

Programmer's Affirmation

Do not generalize
from local failure
to global incompetence.
Your errors are no longer in scope
when the current function returns.
Trust in a catch for every try,
that your validation is robust,
and that if nothing else you have planned
for graceful degradation.

November 12 2013

That She Was Never Far Away

That she was never far away, oh
that she looked over my shoulder
to edit me, and with what greatest grace
and kindness she encouraged me,
my silent watcher sitting perhaps now even at his hand
or feet, healed, rested,
and wiser; 
now indeed she lives, now indeed,
and it is exactly she to whom my tears return
and always will except that now I have been given the sight
of where she is happy
and ever will be,
in hope,
in hope, oh,
near.

November 7 2013

Skitter

It skitters, one leaf

up the street on paper claws.

Snow stalks close behind.

November 2 2013

Parking Lot Entrance (Road Number 4)

Around Here

Around here, people stand by their cars
at the other end of parking lots
and merge with the general grey.
We judge the value of a man 
by the color of his silence
and women govern competently in SUVs.
We know that winter follows fall,
that spring is late and grudging,
and that summer ends;
but work is always there to save us.
We would all be driftwood, if there were enough,
things of wood and wire that have endured the sea,
but much of what we have is pebble,
which is also washed and serviceable,
so most of us make do
with stone.

October 22 2013