Moment

Apples are blushing up
Falling to the ground as the goats bleat
Joy when their paddock fills with sweetness
(Peter rains fruits on them each evening).
The petunias that bullied my clay pots from
Taos have ceased the riot
Of their cascading blooming; I shall chop
Them down, when their leggy residuals turn
To rust, heralding an autumn, an
Autumn that still must arrive
Although this summer of fire and water
Has not been easy to apprehend.

I sit in my favorite spot outside
Watching wisps of clouds in tentative
White, greying into a blue that feels
Cool. We thought the heat was going to be
Unbearable, but it simply wasn’t.
I say to myself that those clouds aren’t
My left eye, although sight is going if I don’t
Tend to taking care of it,
Which I haven’t done.
My head hurts, the welcome certainty
That this is simply pain of being hungry,
Maybe too tired, and
Not the crisis of a planet.
Do you see how easily good
Intentions go awry?
I have so much to reclaim
And I can’t help one soul
Until my own reassembles.

Here, I say to small creatures,
Stealthy nighttime visitors,
Apples for you, a living pond, low some,
In spite of rain; rain damps
Under my bare feet the grass and weeds
Like velvet, tinctured green and
Striped by mower leavings’ browning.
I walk out towards the light.

In mercurial sky,
This leaving light gilds edges’
Cloudy universe of unending change.
Day gives way to nighttime,
Night gives way to dawn.

Untitled

A time now, everywhere

For balance. 

Hold steady, we are 

Pulling on the

Same side of the rope.

I can’t even process everything,

Probably because there is

A bit too much incoming

At this moment. 

I’m on the balance beam

A bit of damned 

Vertigo

But still

Something 

Beautiful

Peaceful

That thousand acre grassland in South Park

At near ten thousand feet 

Reshaped my sense

Of place, of everything
Except it all familiar 

Sinew and bone. Heart.

So lonesome 

Tu me manque

On the Western Slope

This grey morning, early,

Eyes open to a hillock 

Covered in sage and gorse,

Small white succulents dotting 

The dusty ground, 

Mountain lupine faint purple in the

Coming end of summer,

The mountains immovable 

Except of course they aren’t,

Glacial their changing, folly we

Think we see their constant.

Back down this western slope

Swaths of standing dead soon

Giving way to wildfire and in time

The aspen and an autumn

Gold of new. 

All things must change.

Skittering and full of purpose, 

Magpies glean the 

Jutting uplift,

Black and white, their bands 

Of iridescent midnight blue 

Flicker in this new day’s light 

Now blooming from the grey.

How to explain

A homeostasis lit by magpies and 

Sturdy wildflowers? 

No matter, it is gone to 

Call of day, a pause unbidden, 

A world contained and whole,
Gifted in the moment. 

August 13, 2018

August 11 Aloft

For a reason I don’t quite understand

I threw old terrors to the sky, 

I read about all the sciences

I read about the fears and phobias

I read about once again

The places I do not wish to miss, and 

I decided to fly. 

For more than a decade, nearly two,

To fly meant someone dying, and in

An early memorable event, 

I melted down on

A flight that turned around to put me 

Back on terra firma. 

And then the long years,

Missing family, missing beloved friends, 

Missing, and all the while I was growing 

Into a newer woman, with some 

Fulsome years who does

Not believe that life, loving 

Should be lost to terrors, insecurities, or 

Unexpected vicissitudes, finally 

Clear-eyed about what I want to do

With my allotted time:

Welcome the uncertainties that 
Accompany the unknown, the glorious 

And vast.  

Outside the aircraft’s windows 

At 30,000 feet, the cumulus clouds

Are the architectures of gods and

Visionaries, and I begin to 

Become composed

The physical demons of unrealistic fears

Are quieter now, 

And time and again I remember what my 

Destination brother tells me:

Let what seeks you find you. 

I brought Wendell Berry’s Wheel, his 
Meditations on life and death of life

Reborning into new, in mystery,

I know mother earth survives, and 

I know that we do not, nor our progeny.

Along every way, terror, 

Threatening science,

Political despair, cruelty, 

Those things’ lives are limited, 

As are ours.

Up here, nothing from those days 

Is any different, except

My newly-birthed mandate to

Myself to live high, hard, true, brave

There is no static in the sky;

For awhile I viewed the Finger Lakes 

And Lake Ontario from on high; 

Soon I’ll be watching the Great Plains 

If I can even see them from so high aloft

Giving way to the Rockies, and I’m 

Promising myself I’m 

Going to move, and love, with what time I’ve left, purposeful, intentional, 

And stubbornly less afraid. 

Flying

I’m packing for this long journey, 

Knowing there will always be one constant:

Salvation. 

Do we run out of time?

I turn to face a

Veil less and less indistinct

And the vibrancy this side

Of heaven overwhelms.

Reach

Out in the near dark I hear

The clink of the old coffee can, 

He slings goats’ grain and pellets,

Checks their water on his way 

To swim

The light

From that small barn imperceptible

From where I sit, relishing the outside, 

Scents of grow, 

Blink of fireflies

Something gorgeous

Pulls the

Towel ‘round his shoulders, 

Pulsing out towards pond’s dark pastel, 

Trails leading to the dock,

And I know,

Myself,

Alighting to view

Nighttime’s long twilight, 

(So rich, the looking back), that 

Old things glow from 

Barn gardens’ stoney beds,

And from the pond. It all  

May never be enough,

May be enough, 

It simply is.