Pebbles

 I search for a peaceful place

No one will find it for me

No one will define it for me

No one will deter me 

I take in my place here

I take in my life, 

Its colors and textures

And stepping away, 

Into the great mystery

It is all of it

Just a peace

A piece

Air and shadow 

That stay as we depart. 

Heat, Eyes

 The Dipper

Orion’s Belt, 

My frail self says, oh

No one will believe me in

My clarity, but 

You have to believe me, 

The sky with its incomprehensible points

Infinite sketches of

Ancient knowledge, 

Their assessments & guides 

And the frogs, they’re quiet. 

It’s hot. 

Dew point to be wrestled

With and all the rest 

But no matter, 

I tell you there is constancy

Wonder

And the comforting homeostasis 

Of the momentary right 

I don’t think that I can know

Only feel. 

All is well? 

Maybe? 

Does a nanosecond count? 

Breathing Lessons

 We ride into the future on the wings of

Present harbingers

Skyways, shifts of light, the ambience 

Of a moment caught outside 

One found in days of just escaping 

I think we’d all best breathe in 

Miracles, whenever, wherever and

I can smell the rain and 

Loam breaths

Near-rise in miasma as I glance

Around, beyond

Beyond, and back to then and now.

Breathing in the outside

And listening to the thunder.

Amid Storm

 Got a message from the pre-heat-dome sky

Just now, as I alit for a moment

Pausing to feel

Not meaning to be trite 

But doing what all old farmers do, 

And turn my head, sniff the sky, search it too,

I was on the front porch, east to the lake.

The west wind came right up, blowing my greys

And as I came in to fix a bit of dinner, 

The light from the west called me back to the 

Door out into my gardens,

The soon-solstice sky that I saw and felt

Already coloring lush this vesper

Lovely, harbinger of solstice. 

Unbroken

 I arrive in the twilight

Watching night coming on

Things shape now into a

Newly-unknown reality. 

Not a light on the patio

Save the lowered gleam of

My phone

Gunnar on the edges, 

Going out onto patrol 

As twilight gives way

Fireflies 

Meanwhile, 

Spare, barely noticed—

The hummingbirds have gone to bed

Bullfrogs quiet and sonorous—

A drop of rain

A drop of rain

A drop of rain

Gentle

On this bounty 

I won’t ever tip us out

Of our little sailing moonshadow

Seems the rocky seas do

Rock us 

Gently now.

Calm

 Sometimes I’m just 

Calling 

For the kind and sweet 

Of you.

Title No Title

 After the eclipse, 

When my hair turned white

(and I’ll be writing about that later),

Now comes here Israel Iran

Biden Harris Austin, and

The tight circle of 

Situation

This, and have at what/who/where 

This is,

has been coming for decades,

Forever and ever amen,

Ancient

Mideast war that somehow 

Has to happen now

Or the new world war will have 

Finally come soon

Collision

Eclipse

Mids

Easts 

Clouds, canopy and air,

Earth moves,

Quake and water,

These are the lights, they point to 

real days beyond the flood

Drones

Missiles’ bombs

Fossils

To fossil fools

Revolution of

The Anthropocene

Arrives,

Rogue actors ascend

Though in our alert of senses

We know not who they are, 

Nor yet how we respond.