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.