Descending Everywhere

Sitting at dusk

All the other worlds come 

Alive, as the 

Light slants into 

The earth's far side.

Billions of souls

Meld under one fine 

Canopy, the one that floats 

Above us all,

Harboring cries and whispers. 

We make our way

Beyond the waiting veil. 

Float

Last evening Chinese lanterns
Sailed to Canada in the
Windless night,
I watched the children's 
Faces. They were mesmerized.
They are old enough to 
Light the magic 
Floaters and so they did.
We craned our necks to
Watch the lanterns lift gently high, to a
Thousand thousand feet,
Lofting, glowing, quiet, until gone, 
Such small ephemera, 
Small beautiful moments
We created in our meadow, 
Bullfrogs tuning into their 
Night fugue, and 
We saw first fireflies.

Seneca Lake

Quarter moon

Lolls low and indolent

On green spring night hills

Across the Hector Backbone.

I forgot to say to my friend

Today, stop fretting now. Just

Keep doing what you're doing;

Distractions are just

That. You can let go

Those million tasks

Into the blue grey deep of Seneca Lake. 

I do, and the promise 

Flows, silent and older than

Our fight. So let

Ours be as elemental. 

The Gift of Necessary

Carry me and

I'll carry you. 

World may, may not be, and

In the going to 

Wherever awaits,

I think,

All that really matters is

Just carry. 

Shoulder the chore

The task,

The goal and dream

Carry each person

Carry each dream

Carry my heart. 

I carry your heart. 

We don't have long

To try.

Working on it Late

Finally the grass grows long,

The cornices need repair,

The old goat drew her last breath 

At the edge of spring,

And too many four-leggeds

Died hard beginning

On some high plains' 

Pastures somewhere, then

All the way across 

The northern, as

Brutal winter extracted

Its toll.

Here, nurturing 

The lessons of the 

Last few months,

I've given up

Almost all that isolation fosters,

Though I've been

Cherishing the

Shoots, and 

Looking for

Survivors.

Settle

Spring peach sky 

Glows above the stalwart

Hedge of evergreen 

A stripe of fading pink

Rises to meet 

Infinite sky

I say

Change your view 

Sister, live

This changing life

It shimmers, 

Burnishing to gold as it deepens. 

Going

Move into this last
Evolving stop,
The frame where you think
This or that has to be
Any particular way at all, 
It doesn't, in spite of
Figuring out the feelings
Behind all of this


What is
I seek 
So easily the loss,
So far the homeland,
So ache the universe;
Comes 
So humble, humanness, 
So close, love, 
Distance now no measure,
The way of living in this life 
Another chapter, verse,
Reel that flickers image 
Onto an old unknown.


Still, absence has a funny way,
Perhaps it just comes
Somehow full circle
It is what love looks like,
Even though the landscape 
Changes, is enough.


Lately, searching, letting go,
Lately there's been enough of not. 
Sometimes distant 
Regions, breathing strange 
Exotic life are best just so far gone, 
Knowing that in spite of 
Vast and time and memory
Nothing changes. So

Sail then, into the end, far times; 
You will find the precious way, complete. 

Remember that. 
It's hard to say, or see, or share, 
But let it be,
As something deep 
That makes some 
Perfect sense
Arrives.