Moving into Rain

This blessed rain

Pours and hammers, 

Splatters,

Floods, 

Washes

Washes

Washes Earth

Travels in currents

Builds in grey galleons

Falls in its torrents

Washes miseries, 

Miseries

I thought it could be snow

I thought it could be green Christmas

I thought it could be grey, 

Sadness inexplicable.

These winter solstice ends of day,

Though,

Gleam through bare trees standing

In the distance, flames burnishing 

Up from ground, horizon’s twilight sky 

Pulled into 

Solstice change,

To rain.

Maybe all of this

Is what is always there for us to hear

To apprehend,

But in the strife,

This night,

Craving waiting gentling

I dare to wish 

The turning. 

December 25, 2020

Wasted Time

Too old, sort of, to get hung up

On wasted time. 

Not a thing might change, except

Some less elusive sleep. 

https://youtu.be/nWlEsta4xS8

In the Old Times

Hito, he had red hair

And in the old days, 

Oh any music and we danced

Even if there wasn’t a sound

But the moon singing in the trees, a star

Or two that we could see

Above the canyons,

The music could change

And on we went, well

You know, on in 

This life. 

In this life

We carry on, riding

Currents, 

Maybe, even, into the next.

Sometimes right before he’d 

Come to find me, I already knew, 

I’d watch him, narrowing my eyes 

To better see him, 

Watch to see him coming 

Through the cottonwoods 

By his place down on the river

The currents sparkling, 

Part of the dance

Moving, Thinking

 Opening doors

Latching a gate

Framing an ingress

(Always an egress)

Stepping up, climbing over, and 

Scrambling through  

Patches of goldenrod

Thickets of bluestem,  

Asters and woodbine, 

Watching for signals from

Sky-topped starched fields

The harvest is past.

Balance doesn’t come easy

Despite all the options. 

Rain

Just how solitary 

Must one be when 

Rain on the metal rooftop

And an image from

Across the digital divide

Come near at once 

To surprise

Raw in the Moment

Forgive me

He comes in from his

Garden,

From the pond where he 

Swims,

In the lowering summer night-light 

He really doesn’t need

Focus

Any light

Is sufficient; 

I’m not sure he knows this.

He has one good eye, but 

Even that good eye is so not good

And hasn’t been, but he takes his

Glasses off when he swims,

And 

His Italian  

Features are 

Beautiful when he 

Snaps at me

No, no, don’t take a photo

So I do anyway and I obliterate 

His scowl

Thinking that the way

My photo looks after I ignore

His worrying

Is more than likely

The way this world looks

To him, unbalanced

Unwelcome

But what he has been dealt.

Conversation

Later on, 

Neowise

Crossed the sky

I saw it, elevenish, 

Not really watching, 

I’d only meant to think 

About it, how perhaps 

It flew away 

From chaos.

In the bedroom 

I pulled my chair

To look

Northwest, the way I do

And in the familiar sky

There it was, perfect,

What I didn’t know and

Wanted to see for myself

Just there, 

Then gone

Doesn’t even matter 

If there is a point

I found the comet, 

In the northwest sky

Under the tail of the Dipper, 

Something led me here in my life

To darkness, no canopy 

To shade infinite question

It just may be that

I’m moving to what is: 

Each glimpse a whole 

Earlier, some sky 

Announcing difference, perhaps

Meaning 

More beautiful than 

Nights before, 

I found a notion to just

Take pictures of the conversation in

My head, looking into the opening of

Nights on end. 

Who walks then, in to 

Stars, behind logic 

Constraints that won’t stand 

Any test of time,

I watch a sky, I 

Watch the stars, 

Not alone

July 23

Summer

Frogs, stars 

And big and little brights in 

The Dippers and Orion's Belt 

I watch the sky as night vision

Closes into far focus, I

Imagine 

Ancient skies, constant gazings to

The cloak of night known 

Beyond knowing 

Fireflies 

Brighten, disappearing into the

Plush of dark marine,

Fireflies?

Stars?

Do such things matter?

They don’t change the heavens

They don’t change the earth  

My inside eyes watch my watching

As night sky nestles down

Beyond the pale, gone glow gold

Barely seen now, 

Pulse and shimmer imagined, 

To the west.

From somewhere 

In the dark, 

Gunnar arrives

He was on patrol, and

I whisper to him, 

Listen

Frogs

We sit in repose, 

Heat lightning like

Moths’ wings, but no weather 

This night, lighting up into a day

That will arrive as we sleep.

Flickering, the

Celestial shifts on paths

Through old and primal wild, 

Following more 

Heat lightning.

I tell Gunnar, shhh

It’s far away, 

We watch and listen for the thunder. 

Mid-July

https://youtu.be/wWeK6YG4efM?list=RDwWeK6YG4efM

Figuring Out July

I sat outside to 

Pot lime basil, sweet basil, 

Curly parsley and cilantro,

Habeneros that didn’t make it

Into the vegetable plot 

Out back by the barns, 

I potted tall tomato plants

Already setting fruit for

My lonesome kitchen garden
Tu me manque

June 26 

https://youtu.be/T2Kn3j7o2yY

Arriving

Looking west, she saw 

Hito, coming through the 

Garden

Only it was late, 

Quarter moon just

Enough light, 

Foxes with their odd, mating voices, 

And earlier 

Choraling frogs and hummingbirds,

The opening up

Joyful, such hard work into

The salvation of outside 

Peach sky but for a few moments

And then

Grey sailing ships. 

On an Old Tapestry

There comes a time when

You stop trying to explain things.

How can you, when
You don’t even know yourself?

Looking at an old textile 

I think, something there,

As she was stitching said 

Pay no attention to 

Provenance, for that is
For the future, and 

Need not be contemplated.

This woman in another century,  

Stitching into an unknown

Simply didn’t think 

Like that, 

Her musings long ago, as she took 

Her careful stitches: 

“I wonder, are they roses?”

In my own world centuries on 

I really can’t say,

The fabric takes on roses

Although I think they’re 

Peonies. 

Maybe I’m too loosely

Constructed in these strange days,

When nothing makes much sense.

I rearrange these old roses, thinking 

Old peonies, while through the years her 

Stitchery whispers to me, so silent: 

Watch, lean in,

Listen, see the colors.

The fabric’s frayed from ageless age,

A provenance of sorts arriving after all,

In a way I am meant to note:

Knit and stitch all things together

And they will come into

To be.

A Night Between the Lakes

Outage,

Frustrating 

I’m already at some psychic 

Limit

Leave me

Alone 

Then, all right? Now

Night dark beautiful

No power on our rural road

No power we can see

And isn’t that a stunning word

To employ, power, when I 

Wish for leveling, for balance? 

Realities collide

What I wish, what is,

Shows essence in the midst

Of frustration, and

Meanwhile the utility trucks prowl our

Road, reassuring somehow, 

Simply just their prosaic quest 

How pure and beautiful this dark

Forcing contemplation

Forcing surrender

Only a few moments really, these eleven hours, 

Perhaps more, but never mind, 

In the greater scheme I’ll never know, I 

Shall humble into dark, join 

Myself into

One bolt of nothingness 

And everything

When the children were little 

We walked the night

Listening to the indigenous 

Creatures of that dark cover, 

Mindful of meadow and pond,

We learned to suspend insistence

And give in to 

The vision of the moment’s night. 

Never could I have imagined 

That lesson coming home

In my fulsome fury about

A simple power outage

But here we are, and it is so 

And I overwhelm myself with
The deep lightlessness of 

Grateful. 

My mind stirs,

Straying into the brackets 

Of my life.

Earlier I fought to photograph 

This storm, its changing light, but 

Could not get it right 

When all I needed to do

Was feel the winds change 

Trust the corridors of derecho 

And gale, and let words find
My elemental learning

Tonight I understand 

From the young guys in the trucks 

That everything went out and down

Over on Seneca in this day’s late
Afternoon,
And so here

Atop the pause 

Descending from the Hector Backbone
Down toward Cayuga 

The world just had to stop.

The power’s come back on now. 

Monsoon

Monsoon

That isn’t something

Someone from the plains might say. 

But it’s been raining and

Raining

And the wind 

Is more 

Winds

Different behavior and velocity

She realizes how 

All things must change 

And how the 

Cottonwoods out back 

Behind the stable,

Toward his house root

Deep and reaching down,

Belonging, 

Longing, really, to the river

She wonders where he is, 

Late coming from the river

From the storm

Along the Little Huerfano

In the new morning 

Skies the bluest blue

Yarrow thick, a-blooming

Tiny daisies, bellflowers

She looks out toward the stable 

Where she has her garden,

Nail up some trellis 

On the south side, there, 

She thinks, 

This summer,

Hollyhocks

Beautiful velvety furling in  

Warming morning sun

Out there in her garden.

She wakes up from the dream and 

Here they are. 

It is the summertime.

She watches him coming 

Through hip-high bluestem 

And wheatgrass on the path

From his house

Under the cottonwoods 

Along the river 

His blue and white unbuttoned 

Shirttails lift,

Rustle of river wind, 

Thermos glints.

She made a funny loaf of sorts. 

They sit together in the brightening

Nothing’s ever changed. 

There is no time now,

She sees it in his eyes, he sees in hers 

The barest nod, the 

Slightest shift of 

Faint wind 

In morning stillness

They catch 

The old deep quickening 

Sultry current, 

Knowing precious in the air 

That this is all there is 

Coming into Memory

https://youtu.be/j1W9M0RT2oE

Burn

What do you do with rage?

I’ve never experienced such rage.

It brings me to my knees.

They report that he

Holds a little stock

In a pharma churning out pills,

He has a bunch;

Blatherers on the tv

Report this as if a punky white kid

Grabs a couple of drawers of moola

From the A&W

When the girls bring your floats 

And burgers out to the trays on the

Driver’s side 

A friend in another town says

Her chum thinks vitamin c

Is the answer & laughs in her 

Bubble of ignorance as she 

Moves about, all hippie 

Spreading germ

And Jesus she, I guess, means well.

I don’t have time anymore for 

Bullshit 

I know whatever I do I 

Must color in the lines

But it sure as hell doesn’t mean

Meditating, or tweeting, or praying,

Practicing mindfulness, writing letters,

Knocking on doors, 

All that too-fucking-late shit 

Or believing in anything at all, 

Because this parchment is already

Shredded, it’s been smoking,

And no one makes anything whole

From the smoke of treason. 

Can we help one another 

Now to find how to prevent 

Obliteration?

I don’t know, do all of the above

Like we think we try to do, 

But it won’t be enough, I tell you 

Look. 

The falls of spring, spring rains 

Are rushing, 

Wider than Niagara,

Taller than Taughannock, Victoria

No one in his or her right mind 

Takes a canoe or a raft or a boat

Any known life ship

Over such falls, 

But here we are

We do it.

 

On Rain

https://youtu.be/2xhmPectY9U

Tonight I thought to capture
Pink moon, but sky, clouds said
No, this is what you need to hear
And so I walked out into darkness, finally
Stopping for rain
Hesitant, some things flooded when
I returned inside,
Flooded into a little pool
The sound of rain
Shimmering in my mind
Like the pond now into
Its new spring
Looking back
Out into the night
Maybe
I think,
Maybe

https://youtu.be/tQWgKvvbT1g

Find the Country Quiet

The quarter moon 

And Venus, tonight, 

Quite brilliantly bolting 

the treasure of black sky 

Days and nights 

Not really meaning much 

Although I notice by the mailbox

On the road, 

Where I’ve not been often 

Lately, the magnolia is setting her 

Furry buds. 

On my Mother’s Birthday

Inside all day today, 

Alone in the conservatory 

Clipping, tidying

I rooted geranium

During the afternoon, 

And as twilight came on

Fussed with scraggly parsley

An accommodating little

Bit of life, it

Flavored the winter,

Rosemary too

Ferns fared better this season,

Hibiscus settled into 

The quiet light where they 

Weather overwintering

Primordial, the blood and sap 

Admix into releasing loam

As spring arrives in

Fits and starts, my

Every near-miss of spring-readying 

An eternity, patchworking through 

Into the coming bloom—

Tonight’s snow like lace.  

A Small Wondering

When is it alright to weep?
When is it okay to go to your knees?
When does the screaming that takes
Paint off the walls,
Excavates the sacred interior where we
Try to dwell,
Where at one time in folly we thought
We could find homeostasis
Start to decompose into despair?
Is that where we begin?

Way Beyond Twilight

For now the dark sky calls,

Space between my solitude

And my isolation

There is a difference

Seems to be sorting out

In the nighttime 

Barely anything that I can see

Without my spectacles

Except the darkness barely lit by

Some high, long visage of a 

Light rolling steadily descending across

The long plains

After it slipped down through the forest 

All need releases into it, 

That balance, hovering from 

My quiet place. 

A Little Insight

Running on empty,

I light a candle, and blow out the kitchen match, setting it down on the small table

And I pick it up, sure I won’t burn myself when I see no ember on 

The tip, but the tip hugs the wood and 

The rest pulls away.

Once my mother said she would never have pity

For some; long unaware decades I didn’t much understand, until now, her 

Ferocity. There are 

Weeds and wildflowers in my 

Windy landscape. If I run out of gas, 

So what? 

A Week in February

Moon skittered across an opening sky

I came to bed too late and 

Missed its arc hugging the window 

With the ellipse 

That frames my nighttime and

Morning views, but it’s 

Mostly night I have been missing

As I’ve been coming to bed too late.

The heavens have always helped

Me find balance; 

Not to keep, but to always find

I crave the dark and the deep 

Vast quiet 

All sorts of treasures reside there

I told a nurse today, I 

Had to see a surgeon for absolutely 

No big deal, 

But we got to talking 

And I told her, 

You know what is really good

About the age thing

Is that it is perfectly fine 

Indeed admirable or at least

Sufferable

To be a little crazy. 

The night light floods my sounds

Celtic ballads, an organ plundering

 Into transporting chord,

Bright shadow streaming into song,

Tree frogs, coyotes too 

When they feast

Voices from 

Bangladesh and Gullah

Baying, crying, hosanna

A far tinkle of laughter

Stirrings of blood and past, 

Haunting me and 

Weeping into time as it shortens

My disablements.

I know I’m fighting 

But when I stop, when I want to,

When I see what strums the chords 

Of this small bolt of light I call my life, 

I hope maybe I might move to purpose,

And like the phases of the moon, 

There really is no end and no beginning

Each wax and wane the signal.

February 3 and now February 8