Coda

For George 

April 11, 2022

In long years now suddenly past

Memories float before we understand 

That they are the realness of all that

We have left when he is gone 

On a terrible April day

We lost this beautiful human being 

And searching for consolation

I close my eyes this night

And sense him filling up into

Eternity, tethers loosening as 

He flies above these bonds of earth

And in his gentle ways

We are with him

He carries us, for

Such is love 

               *************

On this day there was no rain,

The air temperate

And not unusual in Maine

In the ordinary palate of that sky,

His last moments hoped serene and sunny, 

Portending spring, 

Up on the second level

Of the place he told us was going 

To be his last, his last big build

I imagine as he grasped his hammer

He knew the daffodils were 

Just beginning, altho no lupines yet

And that Androscoggin shimmered 

In the placid of the day 

And then 

Mandala, veiled and porous, 

Encircling a certain slant of light,

Whiff of sawdust,

Quirk of wind,

Paused his given nanosecond in 

This life’s time, and 

George was gone. 

This was his day.

And now he goes, as 

He goes now 

Into the gold of his new light.

 

Loam

In the precious dark comes

Early spring 

I know we have winter, iced miles 

To go

But

Connection

Survives the temporal and

I do not wish to

Explain

February 19

Winter Canvas

I navigate 

Answers, or at least 

perspective

Abound, in these crazed, snow-

Wrapped fields, 

Shards of memory buried in 

An unend of winter days, 

Long, stark horizons

Listen to yourself, 

she said to me, 

One of her 

Gifts and 

So I am.

My Math Madness

The days are long 

The years fly by 

Days and nights merge 

Into the endless question,

The so-what of it all

Meaning, just what is it we 

See, what do we think 

We see? 

I am not one 

Of those morbid, despairing types, 

Half the time, when I gaze around,

I understand

What I am seeing,

Or I think I do

Even though half the time 

What my brain says I’m seeing

Makes no sense to me, 

And the other 

Half the time I don’t have a clue, 

But no matter

When the algebra of this madness

Unwinds into my consciousness, 

I just think to myself that I want to

Go for a coffee with someone I love

Beyond expressing. 

Wading in the Shallows

 

I thought to come to a blank page

Because swirls and clouds are 

Crowding in my head and heart.

I had a notion to excavate 

The granularity.

Well, here I am,

I’ve no idea what all that agitation

Was about, except a flash of insight: 

Beauty’s no mood or recognition,

No, true as breath 

In every second

In every glance or affect 

Pinwheels snowing, 

Scent of patchouli, mesquite, 

Memory drifting off 

Into a saving for another time, 

The softness of this isolation—

This is beauty, everywhere

Still

…I see the trouble coming

The train is on an old track

Arriving when it’s neither 

Night nor day, the trestle trembling

And no whistle blowing to 

Haunt the strangeness

Of the interstitials, and 

Even if I wanted to,

There’s not one thing that I could do

But let it arrive.

Perhaps this solitary 

Is something to be reckoned with,

The tide comes in, the tide goes out, 

Examined closely for some implicit lack

Or message 

I think,

Depending on the view,

I have a choice: I can 

Wrap myself in the beauty of 

This emptiness or move,

As well, into 

The sweeping shallows

Perigee

Near moon

Waning gibbous

Night before last when

He came to bed, 

I stirred

When he put his head and hands

Upon me as he does when 

He comes to bed, 

I stirred

And there was in slumbered glimpse

Perfect sky, night black

And nothing else, save 

A calm in the universe, where

Near full moon throbbed,

Gold orb

In dark

December 14 

Looking for Harmony

 https://youtu.be/KiV7Vo9k8RM