Soon New Year

In this Christmas house

They sprawl everywhere

Long legs, new-blooming selves, 

Prescient words, questions, as 

Their freshest lives and undefinable 

Tethers reach and grow, 

When they and we understand that now 

They move into who they are

While their parents watch, achieving

Distance and their nana remembers her

Grown-up children those

Many long-ago Christmases

The wood floors have snowy 

Paw prints, boot-tracks,

Picking up the flotsam

From the unswept porch and countless 

Ins and outs, pick up coffee, don’t 

Forget the fennel and before you 

Go off to the market, can you bring

In the firewood? 

The dogs go in and out,

With this one or on that errand

Glory be, there are nine

Of them, best dogs.

Someone puts another log on the

Fire in the Dead Parents Room

As the magic music of my Christmases

Past calms and locates me in my

Season here. It fills our old house 

And we all, in the family camaraderie 

Of trying to stay warm 

In this unimaginable cold

That no old house has had to 

Endure for too

Long, to say nothing of its humans

And the ancient others,

Burst in our ways into an emerging

And rather fulsome 

Wholeness that comforts me. 

They bookend me. They move into

And I move on, 

Opening new-birthed 

Winter horizons 

Mine, I guess,

Anyway, speaking for myself, 

A necessary kind of light comes 

Somehow, to my surprise, and 

I open my eyes wider in awareness 

And tell myself now, listen, it’s 

Time for sleep.

Comment

All is well when I order the

Flying monkeys and deviltries

That haunt me in these strange days

Of doing the best I can

To take a rest

For the fight 

To come. I might not even 

Be here, but if we all

Put our truths out to one another

I think some better days for us

Might be a-borning. 

Finding Home II

Old round silver ball, the
Moon steadies this nighttime
So I can think about how
Everything just keeps
On, down river banks, across
The plains and
If I look, on
The paths through
Old places still there
From when I
Was small,

My sight first opened then
To clouds above the prairies, just
Beyond my mother’s black eyes,
Later to remember
Satins of willow branches
Dad’s Setter so graceful it
Seemed he could fly, and
Other constants of the
Grasslands, beauty’s home, like
My mother’s orchards
And winter

As a vision floats fulsome
In the western moonlit sky,
Memory slips back to
That shallow valley,
I was nurtured there in
Switchgrass, bluestem,
Wind and cherry trees.

Unfinding Words

You need to know

I can’t take care

Of you since 

This moon out here in my 

Small paradise 

Over these lakes reflects back

A bare, an aching yearning 

That will never go away, 

Won’t leave me room to breathe,

Much less join you in your quest,

Uncertain, filed as ghostly

And unsure, because of course, it is

When I think back, parting

The imagined veil, 

A caution and a gift into the 

Newness of what I only now

Remember that 

I feared as unexamined 

All resolves into some other 

Fulsome universe,

The fragments and the sense

Of it teasing into 

Some new whole.
Oh! The gemstones that
I near
Left out
Live brilliant,
All is well.

Reaching

Autumn out there now

Yellow leaves and brown underfoot

Whirligigs from the maples

Floating across the red rooftop 

To where we sat on the patio

Stunned by sky

A bit of homeostasis for no

Real reason whatsoever. 

Not much else matters. 

Moon

There's a light in the sky

Tonight 

Harvest moon,

Gold enough, harrowing silver

I never thought which way 

Or how often the moon

Rises before she claims western nights

But she arrives, on her schedule

And for this moon, tonight, I'm watching 

Her traverse south, from her low

Eastern perch, in the cornfield 

Across the road 

And but for the clouds now, 

I may watch how heaven changes

Into the western 

Morning. 

I think

If I am wakeful, I'll see

Her slip away as sun comes up,

That slip of light 

Abiding. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vUSYlotulU8

Reposting My Blind Eye

Blind Eye

In Exeter, the apples lay rotting on the garden path,

As gentle Devon summered in a late last bluest sky,

And man-tall hedgerows that lined

The brown-mapped roads up on the moor

Began to show their russets and their goldens 

As the light began to die

Earlier and earlier, the thorny hawthorns bare,

The maple, oak and dogwood leaves floating down

To hedges’ grassy banks,

Leaving holly and primroses to brave the coming wind,

To color through the gray.

The chill was there that long past fall,

A marker of an unseen pulse, a throb of

Strife, not hers, she thought, but from the

Rovers on the quai, the travelers’ dogs all running wild,

Or hearty shouts of revelers closing down

The pub at 2 AM in Wonford Road.

She didn’t want to know.

She closed her eyes, and didn’t see the world was spinning

Way too fast; her garden bloomed through early frost,

She carried on; the blind eye turned to

Balm enough no matter present tense:

On the trellis by the terraced beds, the bramble and the ivy twined,

She should have seen the signs.

Ah, well; all that was long ago, the choirs stilled, the

Gateways closed, the spring of making new again

Choked by betrayal’s rust; corrosive lies,

And long into the future that came awake in that bad

Dream, the beauty of that year turned to dust and formlessness.

In dormancy all things repair; they sleep into another time,

And so she did; the decades cloaked in silence as she moved

Through past and memory, stoked indifference, turned

Away, resolved to find some relic, some retrieval from the ash.

Who knows just where forgiveness lives; who tells one how to do it?

But forgive she did, with wisdom earned, eyes seeing all around,

And now she sees another turn, another of life’s seasons:

Her spring was dashed, and summer too; all that is gone

Forever now, a waste of her, a waste of time, time ungifted witlessly,

And no recoup, no recompense, though

Steeliness and wholeness won,

And she is seeing where she’s been; the hedgerow bare,

The thorns to keep the wild ones out,

But the holly’s red, the primrose blooming,

For she is autumn now.

Far Out There

So, is now when we're supposed to 

Be saying goodbyes, but we don't 

Know it? 

We talk among ourselves about

This listlessness, the ennui

We don't have the language 

About it yet.

Powerful, though, the fields

Around us as we navigate 

If we find the quiet within

Enough to breathe and 

Reassemble

Resolution, ever?

In night, quiet, black out there,

I circle around mind's persistences,

I think I should try to listen to myself, 

And am grateful

That I'm not inclined 

To give short shrift

To all the matters staring at me,

The ones I put in front of me

And it's such a struggle, 

And oh Lord I am so tired

Though.

The road was beautiful

And the gentle land out there

Was rolling sweet

Still, I couldn't do it all,

When I went when that 

Place called, 

And so I didn't. I just tried,

Ever and anon.

I say I tried to lose and leave you there,

But when the spinning and the ordering

Came round, again, and stopped, 

I found you, there, as here

I think I carry you, the way

We do it, watching as the road

Grows longer, far and dimmer, and 

Tucking you, you're one of them,

Away in memory, journey,

Passage, and I find I'm shining 

Still, I shine for you, 

You're shining.

Once Undone

I recall,
I think I recall sitting with you
In the creaking swing on the
Side porch, perhaps
When the air softened up
And quit the restlessness from
The prairie wind for those
Moments between end of
Day, well, the high, clear light
And the pause pregnant with
Birds, frogs, the breath between
Those perfect balanced worlds
As we nestled young into
One another, and
Into silken night.

Earlier on any afternoon we would lie
On blankets under the willow
And the scent, wisp of
Lavender about to bloom and
Lilac bursting lilac all our
Senses—beyond the prairie
Tall grass in the twilight
Coming on, when
I'd willed, then, time to stop,
All there in those
Moments, every fiber,
Every sinew was on fire.
You were so beautiful.

Hard to say now,
Another lifetime on,
Perhaps I was looking for
You even then,
Searching for the lush
Landscape of lust,
Most likely I can't really
Even try to call it love,
But there, dusk into a midnight
Blue I found you, only hopelessly
Years on, colliding, veering
Into a present coming through
The golden past miasma

A violet lightning broke the dark
Across the prairie,
And through the willow's slender
Lacy boughs, I remember how
The sky flashed rich
And strange.
I let it all live into life there then,
As now, but I must tell you,
Though, I don't really know,
Perhaps I am letting go,
Perhaps climbing ragged
Like the honeysuckle
On the pergola these decades
On, your face and
Countenance as it was then,
Finding you, and finally knowing:
It was enough.

Jump

Anything is possible,

Just listen to the folks 

Around you. 

Look at the light in

Your western skies, your 

Eastern skies,

There are such good 

Answers around us. 

Today and tonight I talked

And listened to

Some friends, from near

And far, and I can't quite 

Describe this yet,

But these good things 

Are happening. 

Words for a Highway

I had a huge
Wave of homesick,
Had some waves of it
These two days,
And it canopied me all today,
Mowing, weeding, looking at
The perfect sky,
One day we won't be able to go,
We will be stuck in longing.
We won't be able to traverse the
Miles, feelings or
Attitudes, the rigor of putting
Wheels toward the beckon
Of the west, each mile
Signaling that it might
Be the last.
Mortality looms, and
It seems liberating.
Tonight I told them, my kids,
All the hell that's coming.
They sat quiet and
Looked up at these heavens
And I told them
As best I could, it
Starts from what feels
Like home,
We have to rebuild
This world.

Last Quarter

That quarter moon
Moved really fast across
The western sky just now,
Readying for tomorrow
Here on the cusp of midnight.
My view shed is changing,
In ways I understand,
I look at all my views and
All the things I need
Are there. And were.
I've thought about,
For a couple of years now,
The last quarter when
Winter roses bloom,
Tonight that quarter moon
Raced across the late June
Sky so fast I hardly had
The time to close my
Eyes and open to
Its glow.

Linden Now

Cat slouches in an open sill,
While apple gold-green
Light transports the
Heady scent of linden,
Aphrodisiac of smell and light,
The motionless end of day.
But how do light and scent move so,
On quiet air,
Near-tactile waves,
To knit and stitch
This all together?
There is no sound but bird, the
Baaing of the sheep for corn
Because the light says
It is time, in the
Pause of streaming gold.
Quiet, the plush of night arrives,
Carrying the strands that waft
Far above the rain-soaked earth,
Wild-weathered early summer day,
Rain off, then on, the stuff of
Rainbow, smell of sod and linden.
Whoever sits and
Smells the linden
In its ephemeral season
Is changed; I swear light carries scent,
And in this fractal moment,
There is only this:

Light
Rain
Smell of
Linden

And then the subtle shift,
Harbingered by half-moon in
Still near day-lit sky, rising from the rain,
Before the night’s new universe—
I made it wait, just now, so I could
Fold the sensate, feeling drifts
Into the velvet close.

Garcia-Marquez, Walcott, and Momaday

Wanting for memory
To explain the floating images,
Fugitive phrases
In my mind, the ones I can't
Quite catch, snippets
Of old stories, forgotten poems,
Writing on the land, they
Admix into this
Monologue of rain,
Everything outside and almost
Even in
Green and dripping,
Branches on the trees
Bending near to ground,
They are heavy with rain and
Suppled by the
Blanket of humidity,
Although the cold is coming on
In evening now,
Like an out of step dancer
On the season's stage.
Meanwhile from the unrelenting
Grey aloft, a shaft of
Light appears, though I can't see
The break in sky, nor can I see
Clouds moving, assembling and
Parting to explain,
But there it is.
Tomorrow, comes the sun.

Memory

Summers were long in that time,
And down the road, the
Cranky old woman who lived
Amid her hollyhocks on the
Shabby farm
Would sell you a glass quart of
Heaven's cream
Only, tho, if you were nice.
It was hard to figure her out.
After dinner we played kickball,
In our field, or maybe it was the
NeIghbor's field, but I can't recall
For sure.

My grandmother would go into
The orchard to pick apples,
Cherries too, for pies,
And she sat in the short grass
Dad kept mowed, out there
Under the big willow.
Once she settled so quietly
Into the green weedy
Sweet-smelling place
That a wee garter snake wriggled
Away from her intrusion
But she wasn't in the
Least plussed.

Later this place flows far
From my childhood,
Still anchoring me in
Such palpable ways,
As is the task of memory
In the striving for the stories.
Now, did I really live there?
Did my grandmother lean
Back against the willow and
Tap her cane in random punctuating
Of her stories,
Did her green eyes flash with
Merriment or mirth as she
Fabricated life?
No matter, for I couldn't
Sort it out if the
Queen appeared
To tease out my recall with
Some reward.
I think, in my long days, about
Stories, and that embellishing
Is simply how the frame
Illuminates as
We move along.

Redefining Hope

Down behind the wild hedgerow

In that little dip where spruces 

Stand apart and make a

Heart if I'm looking for signs, 

The sky molds into pure 

Peach, the golden peach of 

Day's passage into  

The night.

I see the black green 

foreground life:

old evergreen and cypress

Punctuating landscape,

I see the old apple tree

In fading silhouette, all

Bookmarking the miracle of 

Change as day gives

Way to night. 

Now grey cirrus float atop

This light, counterpoint to 

The slipping glow, the

Traveling across the land,

As sun arrives 

To burnish fields and rivers 

Of the west.

This exquisite ephemera—

Light, change, constancy—

Are all I need for now. 

Road Talk

Turmoil begins to settle,

Who could ever say why,

But it does,

In visceral, tangible ways.

In the background 

A fine presence,

It is enough, addressing,

Wafting into

The next looming,

Uncharted time. 

And all I want is that 

Uncharted time.

I am figuring that 

Out now. 

A Good Day

What kind of a moon is this,
Anyway, stabbing bright
As the middle of the
Night shifts towards daylight

I am not here often.

Clouds float on past my watch
Obscuring the western light
Faint glow
As it drops to morning
I'm so tired
I just need to look out at that sky
For a bit, before I stop
Understanding what I'm
Thinking, because, just
Tired.

Holding the line, stepping up
And into, isn't that what
We are meant to do? It's
Quite clear that I have to sleep
Before I can't fake the sky, tho
My maps seem clearer now.

A Mellow

Early May 

There were the days when

Nothing made sense

And it didn't really matter.

All our lives are fiction

We make up our own

Stories anyway

Who is ever to say

That we aren't who we are 

As we say we want to be.

So, if I want to, I say I am a poet

Or a truck driver,

Or a journalist

Or maybe I grow vegetables

In the Rio Grande valley and

Call myself a businesswoman, 

Maybe I build a cabin

In a copse of woods 

Maybe I buy an old house,

Maybe I move shelter

As I'm going along, moving

From heaven into heaven

In my allotted nanosecond,

I break ground for new,

I hitch up my Orion's Belt, understanding

The Hunter comes as always, 

Even when stopping to think that 

Holding on could be the death

And why I must remember, in 

My dream, my prayer and lust, 

That in the breathless moment given me

I've determined to depart 

Intent, unafraid, full throttle

And when I think back on
All my longish years

Trying to remember the red-headed days

When I was wild in that freedom I hardly recognized

Until now, I'm beginning to think my

Last of time 

Might show up with some surprises. 

For Now

Never thinking about balance

Until it unbegins, I 

Watch the sky lifting. 

The gray shines shimmering, opening 

Into sun blue light, and 

Washed by shifts in time and season, 

The patina feels forgiving in 

Vast mystery.

Almost there, I'm thinking, 

The structures of my 

Life as I define them,

Relief against the sky that 

I forgot was waiting, and I 

Start to shape some things

That might become significant 

To me. 

I've been watching for the 

Hostas we transplanted along

The drive back to the barn,

Under maples, young maples maybe,

Some are up already, 

Claiming my first glance

As I go about, but every day or so

I carefully step into the russet mulch, 

Bend down a bit to shush away

The rich organics, looking for more

Furls of leaves emerging 

From the winter. 

Maybe this is all there is to 

My small disturbance; maybe I'm 

Not even quite sure just what 

My unbalance really is. Maybe 

It's the winding path that only goes

One way, weathering finally into 

Color, feeling, gratitude, regret,

And love,

So of course I am from

Time to time unbalanced,

From time to time unhinged.

But then, I see that persistence, constancies, every scrap of life 

Upon this earthly plain

Seeking integrity, some frail, some resolute, 

Or maybe waiting 

For completeness in the next beyond

Gives way to death and hostas

Proving there are miracles 

On the journey,

Beautiful and in the way it is,

The pattern of unknown.

Dream

It started some days before

Many things dreamed dreaming into being 

Still, the mundane and irksome

Bits getting about in uneven spring

Though clouds of redbud everywhere

Uneven, when I cross old floorboards

They've deflected for so long

The old square nailheads pop through 

The pine, and I don't stumble

But almost. I don't know but I

Am unsteady, the trick being to 

Say why. I am sorting through the 

Possibilities.

Last night after some surprises,

A deep wound began to bleed 

Among the healed places, so I slept

And there, far, far away, your gentle

Soothing hands upon me

Take time to understand, 

You said. And so I did.

Spring Diary

Wind up, gusts its many voices,
I heard fox in the night, coyote, now
I hear wind and peepers.

And ground is bursting,
I wander barefooted on spongy new-mown
Grass I should have mowed five days ago,
And in the hovering silence,
Birdsong begins as dusk comes.
We lost a grand old arbor vitae to
Two-years ago the polar kill,
Last summer the drought; the old thing
Just couldn't make it, or
Maybe just the life of tree.
Like mine, just the given life of tree.

Here amidst
Newness as if rare,
Fritillaria and phlox spill over stone beds
And old tree peonies are close to magic
When their yellow blooms,
Foundation stones under
The old barn disheveled now;
Vixen re-arranged them for her kits.

I walk away, heading for the pond,
Wow, I think, here the springing diary,
Swirling words inadequate, so
I snap photos with my iPhone, tho
I can't jettison my words.

In now's suspended quiet,
Four cyclists go down
Our road, sleek into the welcoming end of
Day, they passage as counterpoint
To my interior deep,
Slicing on slim tires, in bright silks,
Helmeted gazes turning slightly, as one
Toward our old place,
Perhaps they smell
The new-mown grasses,
New-mown weeds,
They don't know I watch them flying by
From pond-side reverie.

Sun fades; there is a chill,
Wind's direction's changed,
I wander thru my small pasture,
Back to my kitchen,
Start chopping, thinking about dinner.
We have a new season's evening.
Grateful, I nestle in.

Vixen

April 10

This morning I opened my eyes—

The way the light, or lack of it,

At any certain time looking back at the 

Shadows and the sky

Towards the barn tells me the time,

This morning I woke just before

Daybreak, and then around eight,

Slept for a few minutes more, 

Not the hour I'd hoped.

Anyway I woke straight awake, for a 

Reason, and before

I had the chance to fix my glasses 

On my nose I knew she was out there,

Just the slightest 

Disturbance in the field, 

Some slightly-burnished red

Mama shares my place,

Patient small beast who's made her peace

Enough with us to let her kits romp,

Tumbling through the stone foundation

Of that old barn, grey fur balls 

Pestering her.

I grabbed my phone to take her picture,

Moved quiet, whispered 

Shhhhhhhhhh

And you know, as I stepped shrinking 

From the bedroom's morning dim,

Climbing up on the sofa to capture her

Through upstairs windows, my slightest 

Movement a disturbance in her field, 

As she'd been with mine,

I balanced on my makeshift perch, 

Dug my toes into the sofa,

Watching with no breathing 

As fox and kits disappeared back 

To their den under the threshing floor,

And I thought, all is well this day.

Slowing

Old dog probably has begun her long
Dying well. I watch her sleeping by the fire.
She still lopes to her spots around
The place; once in a while she even heads to the
Pond. She has decided she's
Not interested in going outside
When it's so cold, and under duress,
Either she goes out on her own
Or we give her
A little directional.
The last couple of days, though,
Morning rays warm the wooden
Floorboards on the side porch, and
In late afternoon the patio begins
To heat from western sun.
She trots out toward the back,
Her old woodpile.

It's something close to gift
That I am watching her for how to do this,
Integrity, autonomy, she
Tells me where she is and
Watches me, so I watch her.
All of this is all beginning, all of this is
Ending. In the middle all of this
Is grey-blast neutral,
Passing from one resolve into another.
Meanwhile, glory! Creation's fires
Burn bright, and promise of the ancient
And persistent longer light
Now blooms in dreams,
The magic summer's coming, and
She and I, and she and I,
We have our embers.

Pre-return

Coming home through rain, 

Edge persisting, though where it ends

Is unknowable, and in the widening 

Despair, a friend sends me her photograph of

A tulip early blooming, closeup of rich ruby petals 

About to unfold, brimming into the frame. I 

Drive through rain.

Here we are, on the cusp of spring, and

Otherwise what else persists except 

Sea changes that roil in all directions? 

I look for green, I look for diamonds,

Magic droplets on bare branches, 

Magic the stillness, save for rain. 

The edge of hurt, the edge of desolation, 

I tell myself, stand up now, and 

Don't turn back, because

They have given up, and I don't think 

That I have, quite.

Still, it's hard, the rain is cold, 

There's not much green yet,

Really. Tulips wait, croplands flooded, 

Water runs in rivulets, coursing out

New channels in the sodden ground, 

Streams and ponds 

Out of their banks.

On my quiet road no lights are on 

Though it's grey, dusk coming soon. I feel 

This edge of something, but 

It's not for me to know.

I come in out of rain.