Grace

I glance at heart-beating sky,
Pansies giving up evening scent to sunset's peach.

Last spring we tore away the
Cottonwoods invading pond's banks,
Our Edenic glade opening then to
Raw, the earth, stones,
And survival roots.

Now, you know, distress fades
Into deep knowing, and
In the near new distance
A feeling opens without demanding logic.

Color rises into the western ether
And night closes, so soon
Ago the solstice, and
Dreams and currents,
Sweetness
Float
Un-tethered, the

Streaks beyond the forest
Going to pink, and settling, quiet,
Over Seneca's valley.

Snapshot

Go! I say,
My voice breathy, urgent,
Rounding the corner
Coming down from the night-dark hills,
Sending up a word
To God about
The small
Animals
Darting in my
High beams,
Their eyes like little
Landing lights
On some upstate
Back road
Runway
Home

Motherland

Move away just a bit:
Watch while you
Find yourself where your heart
Tells you you're
Going.

Tides roil,
Skies change strangely,
Looking for future
You'll never see,
All that's left
Is
Your heart
Looking for the way out

Sunday Night

What have you retained,

Looking at early spring lace, trees 

Against sunsetted sky?

You search for odd, old connections,

Those you assumed when the world behaved.

There is horizon and

The gift of view;

Not even speaking metaphorically,

It feels almost undiscovered,

This reliable newness, comfort of a season giving way,

Tho’ it has always been so.

Tonight, and in last nights,

A new world arrives,

Birthed from winter;

Promised by winter

It has been coming, in fits and starts.

Like her people, the new

Earth and her sojourners

Can't keep from trying:

Rising Earth, we bloom and strive.

Pangaea

Within old soils there is no age, no strife.
Buds, branches, bulbs and
Primeval knowing move in
Unattended rhyming with
Each change of space, each season,
The breaking apart coming from
Tides and stars, destiny
Not of your intent,
For now, though, you do not have to move
From your homeostasis.

It has come at some cost.

There will be respite when
You return to mystery,
When life will be nothing more
Than what it was that
You have told.

Wane

Out in the great dark
The crescent moon suspends, 
Portending gibbous

Four elements scramble 
For the balance that once was
Just as sure as cranes 
Landing on the braided river

Wisdom and continuity
Don't come cheap, and
What seem like just some
Little prices paid 
Might become unbearable

In the night, solitude hums, 
You look at the vast sky
And you think of all the 
Crossers of the borderlands,
Their tears watering the ancient
Ground of being 

You wrest uncertain words from a new night,
As the fog floats across the ushering moon, and 
You promise to keep trying
Even though 
You will be gone before
You'll know. 

French Inhale

When we were small, well
When we were between
Old child and teen

We stole our father's cigarettes
To learn the ways of life

And other things,
Rebelling I suppose,
Practicing the smoke

And little did I know
So many decades on
That this maneuver that
I'd learned

Would give me pause
One long night
Not knowing much of
Anything
Not even for sure that
Spring was coming.

But looking at it all
Head on
What I pull back to me
I attend to
Life won't last forever
And some things might happen
Maybe not.
But it's all of a fine circle
And as I watch,
Remembering,
The knowing and the shadows
Curl