Going to Italy

The first time I saw Italy

We’d driven in our English car, debarking from

The ferry in Roscov, French northern port, and

Down through Massif Central, a chateau or two

Along the way,

Blankets of blue lavender and yellow rapeseed stretching far beyond imagine.

We’d picnicked on the sides of curving dusty roads,

Never sure where we were going; not much caring, either.

Red round tomatoes,

Just-picked peaches, still dew-splashed, and warm.

Camembert.

And pain au chocolat from

Some small patisserie. 

Driving, driving, villages and fields became Dordogne

And then Provence.

We camped in meadows, dined one long twilight at Auberge-I-can’t-remember.

In the garden of the plastered, timbered inn

There was a swing set for the children, so we lingered as

They climbed and braved at acrobatics,

Sipping aperitif, espresso, then more drink until we

Relinquished days and miles and 

All gave in to sleep.

Next day, our friends turned back, their holiday

Concluded; re-crossed the Channel; returned to moor,

And we drove on, into the tunnels, holding breath

One mile or ten in darkness and ten miles or one 

In brilliant day

Flashing, flickering through Alps—snow-topped—just winking glances; 

Climbing without knowing

Up to French lakes—and Annecy—with crimson potted blossoms

On the rough stone steps of town,

And back into the tunnels, then, until the last one opened into

Sensuous mist, a bit of rain, quixotic flirt of wind

At highest borders. Ahh, extravagance! Cyprus, Russian olives, fragrances,

The beckon of our family: we’re rushing now to see them.

Maggiore, Como, and Berbenno.

Discovering and entering the lush close grey-green palate

Burst from Alpine detours, 

We come home to Italy.

1995
Exeter

Italia

On your way

Perhaps a bright blue roadster, 

Call it a Fiat, at that time useful

With a bit of rust, a divot here and there,

In those days the top

Was always down, and

Sometimes it all made perfect sense

And sometimes it didn’t,

So it goes, so it goes, life 

Is like that. 

Still, those roads were so sweet,

Calling you, and I can see you

Laughing.

Open Road

I sit, sniffing the twilight like farmers do,

A hint of chill carried 

On a breeze no longer hot,

Fixing easy on the grill on the patio,

Of a sudden this breeze wafts

Round the corner, 

Brings linden, heady, rapturous.

I’ve been waiting for it. 

Brother says to me

Let what seeks you find you

And more pieces settle gently 

Into my rich life,

The dawning that I could live

In moment to moment, scent to scent,

Ephemera in skies, 

With love around me, love

Around me,

Is a lifetime’s pondering,

And I’m old enough to let the

Past be, old enough to let it be,

The swiftness now in time’s 

Motion rises to the winds

Seems I hope I’m coming 

Into balance, seems that I 

May fly.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WyHlchGBD2E

Coda into New

You do get to the point

You’re going to say and do

What you want to say and do.

You’re not going to 

Do anything anymore that

You don’t want to do.

It’s liberating, actually

And realizing, it occurs to me

To be careful.

The backstory word 

Rattles around in my head:

Tacit. 

In the strangest way

I am standing on the outside

Of my life, feeling it 

In ways I can’t express

The sense to let it be

Is filled with some new grace.

An order returns.

The hedgerows round the pond

And back towards Bobby’s fields

Start to bloom and knit again, tho 

Porous. I’ve been watching 

The light come 

Through sedum, cottonwood, 

Apple, pear, bramble, 

Rambling rose, elderberry,

Juniper, cedar 

Oh all the rest, the hardwoods and 

The weeds, 

I am living where I am,

Where I want to be. 

Where I want to be wanted.

That doesn’t mean I will be,

But I might.

Let it Be

Homeostasis comes fleet and 

Comforts for long seconds 

In these solstice nights

Now passed, when

Light and words arrived

In the bark of

Trees, some ancient script, 

In patterns across land flicker-lit by

Late fireflies now come in these 

Last nights, and a

Summer skipping through spring and

Back, just too cold sometimes, or 

Hotter than hells’ bellows

In another life

I trod a highland pasture,

Not sure if I would cultivate it or not

It was the work that wore me down,

I tried to find some 

Balance in the heather and the gorse, 

On tavern floors, heels

Clicking, tapping, schessing,

Sounds lifting me to dancing 

And back to a cottage, still and spare, 

Gleaming whitewashed, perched on 

A cliff side tor

Under a highland moon, while 

Wind-sharp current from the 

North Atlantic carried longing,

Unknown, to never dissipate

I would rather have what 

Could have been

Than what was,

The now is what is, 

A bypassing storm

Leaving beautiful

Grays, lit by wind and motion, 

Whippoorwill call, and 

Other birds;

Bullfrogs tuning into night, and 

Close I hear them, hummingbirds,

Magic, all this motion.

The wind picks up again,

One storm floats away, 

Called across another constellation of

Patterns flying to the here then gone.

It’s like that, I think, 

Storms, light, wind, the 

Zephyr from an ocean shore, the 

Clean wash of stout breeze bringing 

Calm after those 

Cells that moved across

Plains’ skies

Flashed purple, lit by

Silver strikes, now flowing into

Years and decades on, 

And I, in primal memory

Recall how to read the signs, these

Things, alive and singular,

Coming from past, another life, 

Coming across oceans, 

Rolling from the prairie,

All the while when I was

Dancing in the mountains.

My Prairie Thinking

Trying to pick thru the thickets

I find I don’t do it well

It’s paralyzing, in the same 

Moments as all possibilities

Are alive,

Those with promise, those with

Sorrow,

Those that confirm

The is and shall be,

Still,

I don’t know how to navigate

Them. 

It is a fortune, though,

That I can go outside, literally

And pick through 

The thickets,

And perhaps

Right now, since there’s been 

Too much rain, and 

I bent a mower blade

But have the new one

And do not like to not

Do what I’m supposed to be doing

For lack of 

A blade, as Robert says,

“A boy job,”

I’m off-balance. 

It’s an unnecessary hiatus, just when 

I’m nearly fully

Into always-healing

Spring, the one that just 

Sprinted through, right on 

Into summer, 

Hence with ferns wild,

Peonies in riot blooming south 

Around to north,

Apple trees and climbers 

Setting buds and blooming, 

Ankle high grass and weeds

Needing my mowing

And me needing my zen.

I have other outside things to do

Though, and so I do,

And feel the heat when

I stretch to hang a basket, 

Damp and full of blooming things 

Planted heavy in the fiber liners, 

Or go out to clip 

Branches that get in my way 

When I am mowing, 

But I don’t think I can

Lift the canopy with the

Big trees now myself,

Although I did three years ago.

My heart pounds too much

And the humidity rolls through me 

With its certainty,

Flows down my face 

And drenches me,

Small mighty river

As I tell myself to get things done.

The canopy needs to be taken up,

No question, just a wee 

Lifting, not too much, because 

There is refuge there,

Deep shade, green filtered sunlight through 

Old oaks, linden, maples, and 

Beyond back to my gardens, 

And the flowerings out there,

Ornamental pear, weeping cherry

And the smokebush. 

Along the new outside

Worlds around here 

These last few years, there’s 

Bramble, 

Wild honeysuckle

Rambling rose

All kinds of things growing 

In the near-two decades

We’ve been composting 

Into our small frontier, stewarding 

As best we can a future in this place 

For someone, 

But I digress, my point was

A trim will do.

I spin like a disappearing world

When I’m doing these sorts of 

Things, or even trying. 

The looking up is sending me into

This vertigo, and sometimes if 

I wait until it stops before I 

Tell myself that it’s all right to wonder

If I’ll be able to keep my bearings,

I see that I am quite steady looking 

Forward, where my vast has always been,

Salvation’s opening spaces.