About December

This, a December day,
Trying to become winter,
Layers quiet upon the countryside,
A mantle over howling strife
Taking over sanity, robbing
Goodness from my life.

But gratitude wells up inside,
Calm knocks and says, be still, and
Watch the chickadees,
They squabble at the feeder,
Watch lone snowflakes, languid motion
Floating from the stern grey sky,
Their lace gone before alighting.

I am weary of
Assault by poseurs, scheming bandits
Who will vanish into some
Post-election,
Post-trauma mist;
They won't matter after their allotted
Sound bites, furious pacings;
They'll be ghosts, just viral mendicants,
Figments of a cosmic evil
That flared and spat out bile,
Dared my earnest mission, balanced core.

Meanwhile soon our family will arrive,
We will close in around
Our own warm hearth,
Fall back into small rituals,
Of mercy, memory and creating,
And we'll watch
Our dogs and comment
How they romp like
Cousins on a summer picnic,
We'll make a trifle, bake some bread,
And feed appled fat-wood
To the fire.

This is all there is, and all there should be,
Breathing in this grey December day,
Watching as light changes, as
The winter solstice comes.
I say a prayer for joy,
A prayer for peace and fairness
As the hours pass,
Reflecting, I look through windows
To the back, the sleeping fields,
The western sky that rolls toward
My old home; I think, now time
To do some chores, bring in more greens,
Find the candles, shelter in, for
Soon enough will come
Another lift-off into night.

Bloom the Earth

Reflecting on the repetitions, those
Carried spaces in between the
Constancies of
Light and dark,
Effort and repose,
Interstitial possibilities of
Joy and despair thrive lucid,
Calling me.

Years float thru as my toehold
Slips in one world to become
Tenacious in some other.
I enter and fade through time.

Watching love and beauty
Shapeshift as roses
Die on winter canes,
Stillness becomes motion.
Refusing to give up, I am
Breathing into dream.

For Buff, Zora, and MJ, Paris, November 2015

Across the homelands
We keep watch,

We see the future coming

The buffalo have now returned 

They graze the grasses long in spring 

And winter wheat will come in time

For harvest after solstice.

I am Tatanka Itancan.

Water glints in morning sun,

A shadow curves to surface light

Folds back down, a graceful dive,

Scales flash and disappear.

I am Cante Skuya Win 

While arching high and over us

Thermal riders fly through clouds,

We hear their cries, the darkening skies,

The Golden Eagle watches.

I am Anunkasan Tokaheya

Across the homelands

We keep watch,

Though we may leave and then come back

To care for Unci Maka

And so this is our vision now,

Ancestors guided us to this

We ask you keep your promises 

We pledge that we'll keep ours. 

We're all one heart, one voice, one plan, 

The one Creator gives us.

No Way Out

Out in the meadow the Japanese maple

Burns red in November sun, slanting in low enough to uplight

The lowest limbs.

Red, it pierces me, destabilizing an

Already unsteady self, wraps anger

And fear twinning as I fight the tears.

In past times I've loved the fall, my

Season, the season of my birth,

I thought that I've been good and strong

And tried to occupy my space and time

With some intention; 

With love and an open heart.

Red, like blood, like fire, fugitive,

This intensity.

Six O'clock AM

Yellow moon,
Round spotlight in an
Early wintery morning,
Fog lifting from the
Frosted fields, a
Close porous mantle 'round
The restless owl.
He'd been hooting
As I drifted off,
Was plaintive when
I woke; the room moon-bright,
My blinded sleep sealed
Wakeful in the silent house.

Alone I strain to recognize
The settling creaks
And sighs of the old place,
The changing darkness
Of the full moon waning
Stirring near-noiseless creatures
Moving on the metal roof
And along the gables,
Big as running bears in
A wary, undreamt landscape.

If he were here I'd have
Tossed and turned
To shield away
The interrupting moon,
And not heard a thing but
The voices in my dream:
Wake up, wake up,
There just might be
A new day waiting, coming;
We're calling now,
We're ready now
For you to claim the light.

North Woods

Russet on the golden miles

The swaths of bracken bronzing 

Into nestled corm to sleep

Amid the thistle and scrub pine

Giving way to watery

Bogs, to kettle lakes

Rimmed by boulders and outcroppings. 

We drive consumed by shouting silence

Of conversation unimagined

When we were young and 

Starting off in a world

Undimmed by so much peril.

But I still carry him, although 

He's gone forever, leaving

Memory in the stillness of my heart,

Ahead of days that roll uncertain

Into a dark where no light shines.

And yet a door was opened once, 

And I will never close it,

Meanwhile the maple and the birch trees 

Shed their leaves,

My season metamorphose

As with theirs, because 

All things must change,

Although for some of us, 

All things will stay the same. 

Redoux

It's hard,

Really hard to keep 

This train on the track.

Some days I don't do well at all

Trying to do this,

And if I give in

To reality,

I'd have to quit trying.

So I live on this 

Restless line,

Hope,

Praise singing from

Some sweet ordinary sky,

The bits of dust kicking 

Up on our country road

Suggesting possibility to reclaim

A spot on this wildly and not understood spinning globe.

If only the black flies 

Would cease

The space outside

At near-perfect dusk

Could seduce me into

Thinking 

I've been so wrong,

Maybe right at other times,

But nonetheless this insight 

Shakes me with this 

Psychic throttle: 

Woman, don't give

Up, and if you do, 

Make a fiction of it and don't forget to

Weave in the thank you bits. 

Meanwhile, hello 

Lovelies, you old lilies blooming now, I see 

You wait in perfect splendor

With some rhythm I'll never

Know, 

Magnificent in the splendid

Diffidence to these strange 

And crippling fights

These ferocious struggles

We think are life and death.

No, life 

Is fulsome in this outside refectory, this holy constant solace, 

And I missed this space, these 

Past few weeks of ancient growing glory 

Probably because of my own self, my failure to always 

keep

Ithaka in mind.

Now gratitude rises to 

Meet the road

Where someone wends his truck to far off home down into the next section;

The neighbors' kids shout their coming in; 

I hear them faint in my

Primordial settling of all this stuff,

And there is

Bird song mixed into

Twilight. 

 

Across the forest, 

Placid Seneca

Floats, miasma

Under still haze

Indifferent as I 

Fret and fuss into

This new stuff, determined 

To live my place, 

Be nourished.

Who will know if 

I quail in resolve

And vision? 

I listen to myself, the 

Answers I have 

Just guesses.

It doesn't matter if I

Succeed or fail. 

Main thing is, I say, I tried.

Heat

Heat is too high

In the house, 

The metrics of the change,

Dew point

And humidity, the stillness

Of the wind I'm trying to beckon

If this front moves through,

All insufficient logic for the

Misery of the body.

Enervating and

A bit cruel,

Unci Maka is just

Responding;

She is who She eternally is.

It is hellishly hot 

Before the 

Sunset on

This mid-northern clime 

July day;

We have water,

Wildness of weather,

Weeds, and

Not too much sun,

Though I wonder

If this is how they'll feel

When I am gone, for it 

Is bearable.

I do see all the beauty, 

Reordering what looks

Like chaos into the paradigm

I see coming.

If I can just get to the 

Other side, I'll be able

To tell them.

Horses

I was standing 

In the dim barn, watching as

The swallows swooped,

Diving under old rafters

And stirring up near-dusk.

From that

Frame I gazed out into the paddock

Boasting stands of

Queen Anne's Lace, old

Stumps persisting

With growing green shoots,

While beyond, in the pasture,

Sarah traded fly masks 

For hackamores, hitching 

Long leads to bring 

Compliant horses to

Graze in grass near the 

Spot where we were viewing 

The pinking sky, mammatus 

Forming and then dissipating

Into the soft dusk of 

Seneca's miraculous hills.

The horses would have none 

Of our sentimental scenario,

Balking at the paddock's threshold

Into the barn,

And thence into the night's

Oncoming recap of a sun-struck day.

Still, her slim communing,

Her own golden mane in

The picture as I watched 

Was more perfect than what

She envisioned:

The swallows swooping,

This daughter and her tawny 

Horses, seen through 

Queen Anne's Lace, 

Tinged by closing gold, 

Unconscious 

Of her pure perfection in my

Moment.  

Settling into Time

Lightening moves through,

Off to the northwest

Like vapors,

Pushing away a storm 

That is sometimes best to bypass.

I suppose

I can just tell myself my

Stories as I figure the way out.

Sky flickers and the night

Unsettles more, but softly. 

My friend said she's going to

Turn away for a while. 

In some cases that could be

A perfectly balanced thing

To do. In others 

Perhaps not as balanced

As it is the radical shift at 

Time's end. 

I don't think I can turn 

Away for a while, 

But I can turn and face

The rush of past, 

Gleam of future 

When it's barely there 

Anymore. 

I have to wonder,

Looking at photos and gardens and things,

What does beauty really mean?

Lately I've given up a great many

Assumptions.

I have so little time

To become aware

It doesn't really matter

I guess.

I untangle my hair

Like a night-gowned prairie

Woman, and 

Put it in a braid

For the night: I 

Imagine and remember and

Call back to my lovers.

Outside and in

The disarray is fevered 

And I think

It's the way life is

Sometimes

I imagine the yard and swaths

Of green blowing tall

Because unmowed, 

I see the gardens beautiful in 

Their blooming, changing seasons,

Filled now with need of weeding.

I imagine going back to lie 

In the long grasses of the

Plains. In reverie 

The house leans into deeper

Beauty's flaws, its disrepair

We see and cannot change, 

At least right now.

At least right now 

I'm like this place.

So Beautiful This Wind

There are people like me

Sitting in the edges of the wind

Wondering how we manifest 

What we know as the elders we are

Connected by nothing

But physics. 

Mechanical Lessons

God damn

The mower just refuses to be fixed 

I wanted light, setting sun, peace, rapprochement

Weeded gardens and weeds trimmed, all

To arrive tonight by my dint

Not so

But out there his peach teeshirt

Recedes toward the back plot

Waiting for vegetables in

This weather crap that we've messed up,

Thoughtless humans.

I'll not dwell on the meta

I'll just try to keep the beauty 

Of this tiny micro-bit up here in mind

Peach

Out there

Peeking through

The back spruce

We need the spruce

To keep out the dust

When Bobby ploughs. 

His teeshirt 

Out there 

Fades like magic into 

The sky hiding behind

Spruces, and I know that is 

The sunset

But hadn't seen how we blend and fade into 

The ethos, this beautiful 

Gaia. 

It is orange 

Behind blue

Spruce

And this light

This air

This breathing 

This unearthly panorama

Saves us,

Nurturing us 

As we extinguish 

The old. 

And meanwhile in 

The wind bringing in the front

We grow young

On this cusp of 

We are.

Moving into Balance

Down side of the ridge

The western sky bands 

Colors of an unsettled

Sunset. It was brilliant

Looking from the second floor back window.

I wonder how many souls

Miss extraordinary light 

As it wends

Its way to the other side.  

For now, the grey stratus, cirrus and nimbus

Lurk and call; 

There was an earlier diamond 

Of sky blue

And now the gun metal light

Gone the red and pink, while

Symphony score

Rises in a night that's

Trying to quiet;

Bullfrogs arrive. 

Scampering subsides.

Comes Calm

Watched red-orange sky recede,
Glancing long into my
Rear view mirror,
Coming home from Seneca,
East through the 
Finger Lakes Forest.

Going over earlier,
How beautiful it was, and
Green: long light
Bathing wooded stands
Punctuating plush watered
Hills, tip of Appalachia.

I knew, despite the truly
Cold May, June days,
And infuriating rain that has
Interfered in
Planting vegetables,
That eventually
Summer would have to come,
Heralding the road's sparse
Path to summer pasture,
Reminding me there is the
Local rhythm, to take me
To my thankful place:
Bobby's snow-bound-weary cattle
Finally gone, to fields across
The Forest's ridge, 
To Hector Grazing.

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.