Dark Sunday Light

 If I don’t care about sides

I’ll see what’s in front of me 

Light a candle in the wind

Flicker, flow, grow, blow out 

Earth always the sextant. 

I said this to myself: 

Begin unburdening now, 

And when the 

Clearing lightens, 

Your wings are stronger. 

And Almost

In early November

This old place is so alive. 

I recall long ago another 

November alchemy, 

When I drove into the slumbering

Meadows flowing from the Hector Backbone

Late, on a night searching for my

Beating heart, 

And now I’m understanding 

What I never knew 

In the molecules of every day, 

Home from the vast night skies of the forest

It is everywhere, in a thousand thousand acres, 

This pulse and breathing, into the 

Necessary interstitial pausing. 

Squirrels hide sustenance under 

The sheets on a guest room bed in this old place—

They have their ways 

And critters in the walls scamper busy, tho

No bird nest builders in the cornices 

Now this season come.

The garden sleeping, 

Bulbed, and rooted deep and 

When I pause I feel our breathing 

We are earthing, fragile passages of time and 

Mine in time as well,

Japanese maple finally drifting leaves red and 

Verdant to the ground

And still, you see, while all not quite into the deep,

I verge on winter. 

Here We Are, I Am

 Wondering this day, 9-11, 

How one deals with shock? 

We tried, as a nation. 

We’re trying now. 

We’re trying as each precious

One of us is trying 

To find the equilibrium.

Bonnie Raitt & Allison Krauss

 https://youtu.be/DZki0PkSgAs?si=WWAQrpUjBAzVeDv7

Woman in a Meadow

Her balm the in-between, 

The interstitials

And somewhere out in the 

Great Plains and the divide, 

Great opening spaces, in

The small meadows she created

I find her

All the Light I Cannot See

Spent all day in the big outside

Mowing into the glory of the clover

Fretting about apple trees’ vigor,

Though they’re old, 

Making sure in my reveries

I kept respectful distance from the 

Pond’s banks 

No tilting in too far, and 

Surprise of 

Wiping tears away

Weeping 

For the kindness, the 

Constancy, and 

Understanding; 

I had to shade my eyes now and then

From a lowering sun, the 

Chords of knowing blinding

Into the precious new again, that 

Some things never change. 

Coming in

To cook up all that

Emotional

Psychic

Visceral

Logical 

Incoming,

I turn to dinner 

Yesterday my friend gave me a bounty of 

Butternut squash soup, 

She said, he doesn’t like it 

And if I had to guess 

I bet it comes from 

The church ladies; an 

Excellent base 

And then the riot:

Mine here, in no order—

Two evenings’ soups

Beets and pesto 

Cream, some honey and 

Black beans

Paprika, and some cheese

And snips of basil, parsleys from

my kitchen garden, 

My way of finding 

Balance 

Relief

 They’re all so safe

The safe ones

In my age and yearning

I cleave to trusting 

Why not, anyway? 

It’s exhausting, otherwise. 

It means, I know, that the 

Fringes and dressings of the circle

Get smaller,

Defining the warp and weave

Design and pattern 

Of my life 

Whereby the task was always, 

Unfolding, whether I would ever 

See it or not, 

To live the best way I’m

Wired, clinging to honesty

Admitting love and its mystery

In the ground that seasons shift

In the tactile of my time.