Good Night from South Bend

            September 23

Across morning's early fall fields

Where summer-sleek cattle

Fold themselves down onto

The turning earth

Sea gulls swoop under

Lowering grey clouds

Full of waiting rain

In the distance I see

The Amish farmer, clad in

Black work clothes,

His straw hat near-gold in

An unexpected shaft of sunlight

That disappears back into

The vast roil of nimbus as

Quickly as he does,

Ducking into his barn,

Shouldering harness

Ephemera, all of it,

Passing whole in my

Sidelong glance,

Wending west, going home.

Coming Home

           

            For Aunt Gretchen

Behind the old dream,

Arriving autumn sun drops early

Behind maples and the orange Octobers.

Driving home from town,

The halo lingers, sun slanting in behind

The western ridges, and

Across the road into the village.

The canopy is up-lit gold,

Branches bending across

The two lanes, like

A trip into the fairy world.

Far away old longings waft,

Slight breezes in the

Change of seasons, and

The homeostasis settles.

Not that it is the right or happy

Place, but it

Is the known, and

Breathing deep and quiet

In the pulsing night

The what might have been

And what might be

Is as alive

As anything, is

Not confined to

Any present, and enduring.

I hum an indistinct tune,

Recalling what she said to me

As I departed home, for home:

Listen to yourself, she said.

I search for sleep, filing 

Tomorrow’s tasks, and weary; and

Suddenly it all

Makes perfect sense.

Many Ways of Landscape

Trusting that the
Cache of iterations
Takes shape
Finally after time
And tears,

The landscape:
Heart
Contour
Texture
Scent
Longing
Remembrance

Writing on it,
I begin to
Reassemble.

Protect

She talks me down from
The angry tree; remember,
She says,
Seneca is our female
Self, rich and nourishing.

Remember to take
What We Protect
And channel it into
This stream of life,
Water is life, and
Mother nourishes.

Seneca reminds:
Ancient (weathers storm)
Deep (harbors dream)
Mighty (endures strife).

There, up there
The Dipper is faint
Perhaps just the way of the
Stars aligning

In the mostly dark sky
North north west
Nothing reveals
But a singular way forward

Lovely
Seneca Lake across the
Hector Backbone, while finding
Me, needing less than
The geography here

Just at my psychic home
On the western edge.

Balancing

Escaping the tyranny of the
Necessary fight
I come to sit outside

Here, in some larger grace
In this long twilight
I could not possibly engineer, and meanwhile
The shred of sun turns
To a tangerine slice

Tucked in the far spruce hedge.
I watch as the grey sky settles
And gazing, I remember the
Light

Light

Be the best
And closest to who
you can be

Let the odd bits be themselves
Enough and true,
Little whole worlds as

The mystery seems close;
Might just be when we
Say goodbye we
Think for an eternal moment
On those we love, and
How hard we tried
On the long rich trip.

Late July

This is all there is to making
Sense:
I walk out the back
Door
And I smell the lilies from the far
Back barn beds
And walking towards
The heady pull of
Life we don't script
We just hope and wait
I feel the expanding universe
Come to meet me,
I set my wine on the stone
Walls with
Lilies cloaking my shoulders
I look at the colors of the
Perfect world
And despite the truth I know
The balance blooms and
I am calm,
Replenished for the struggle.