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

Winter Rose

Always My Winter Rose

These long years, 

Spanning the inexorable pace of this last decade 

I have quested treasure 

In the willing world, and found some,

As other seekers have, all 

Facing in some startle now 

Our own ending time

Considering 

What we take with us

As we move beyond the veil.

Love is love, that’s clear, and 

We’ll take that vast comfort 

Wherever we travel.

Knowing this,

The world smoothes back into 

How we go along. 

The weather across these long lakes

Where I live now

Is mercurial, but I know how to read it

It’s a barometer I learned 

On the plains, as I know you understand, but really, 

Isn’t this the way to

Navigate in the world? 

If one can’t understand the

Shifting winds, the changing skies, the roiling waters

One trusts the ones who do. 

Listening, I write to you and

I wonder when we start returning, 

And when the body

Rich and pulsing 

Flesh and blood, fears and dreams

Starts to turn to face a brighter light?

Even winter rose is beggar to the sky

Where lies the always-open door

For all we know it’s always there

And it’s only God who knows.

For Gretchen 

104 years old this day,

January 25, 2020

I love you with all my heart

Wrexie