Early Spring

Across the valley lights are sparse;
Beyond, dark swaths of near-farmlands
Stretch the length of lake for
More than forty northern miles.

In an almost black sky, unseen stars
Whisper just enough of light to illumine
Peel of moon behind layered cirrus
That turned horizon violet as sun rolled
From edge of sight.

An hour earlier, wind sudden-stopped,
Bird song dissipated, faint scurrying movement,
Snap of twig, and then the
Hovering stillness.

There we sat, bundled in the cold spring,
Sarah and I, watching Robert's lanky form
Some paces from us
Move toward the setting sun
And disappear into new-blooming night.

Finding Cranes

Last night, an old friend said

She thought she and another old friend

Would go out finding cranes.

I imagine, remembering that.

We go to a rutted road along the river

It is not a farm road,

Nor a river road.

It hugs the Platte,

Overlooks a very old cottonwood that

Was downed in a storm,

And lashed not to sky

But to earth

And over time enough

Jutted a perch over the

River,

Where the

Children toddled and looked at the

Wide world there.

As years moved on

We went to watch for the cranes

When they came back

In the chilled and stubbled spring

Sometimes still frozen.

Maybe we never realized

They went away.

In some ways, they really do not go away.

The thickets on the river bank, young cottonwood,

Maybe chokecherry,

Tufty grass, and tiny blue wild daisies

And sky enough to settle

All these years on

Remember me

To then.

We had to listen, and be still

Sometimes to almost hold our frosty breaths

We had to hope we’d find the spot they

Found

The cranes,

Their darkening skies returning

Finding home

Keeping Light

Straying toward light at late day's end,

Room warm, suffused,

The intensity of lowering illumination on the book's page

Making the words impossible to see

And the images, looking up, 

Impossible to apprehend in their blinding fade

Mostly

The man sleeps, exhausted,

On the small chaise,

Working unmitigated hours and

Not really knowing what the next chapters might be.

His snoring tells me

He is away, 

Returned to whatever unclaimed 

Pinnacles and unsettled battles in the 

Woodlands and swampy marshes

His wild mind discovers in this, his other 

World, his far, chaotic realm,

And I gaze on the vulnerable him,

Trying to remember love and passion,

And finding just some deep repose 

Of knowing:

Pity and regard in the twisted crosshairs of long enduring,

Shredded with hope and leavened by

The magic light. 

From the High Fields to the Fire

Across a snowy landscape

In reverie

Things stitch together

Under lace of smoke, pluming from the fire into

Ice that hangs in air,

The curl of years

Weaving through the vision's

Gray winter afternoon,

Heart beating,

Grateful

Contemplative

Pausing in emotion's balance --

Brought on by years and

The running out of time, when

Just a few magisterial snows are left,

Each one amplifying my repose

By gently covering all that is

Unnecessary

And nurturing what is left --

Suddenly I see so clearly

How the belt of snow and cap of sky,

Their spare distinctions elemental,

Encompass all that anyone might ever need to find,

To nourish everlasting, back

From the high fields to the fire.

Baltic

Night deep black outside,

Stars blinding in the dome of heaven,

South of Lake Ontario, and Canada, beyond.

Wind moans around old cornices

Comes blowing from the northeast,

Brings a vision so mysterious, time and place a blur,

Wind susurrating sibilance into feeling, then to words.

From across the fearful maritime,

Across the North Atlantic,

Where steppes roll deep and frigid

Into vast and nothingness

The gypsy wraps her fringed shawl tight,

Clasps a volume of her verses,

Words on desiccating pages,

She’s been writing all the evening

In the small hut’s candlelight.

She hurries toward the fireplace glow

That flickers through the window

From a cottage on the shore;

Lonely on the "zinc-gray" Baltic

Brodsky pours some vodka there,

And there they read together,

The frozen world forgotten,

In their rich and blending tones

Reading verses in a language

I do not know but understand.

I’m organic in this fabric I created out of nowhere,

Their stanzas transcending my prosaic here and now,

And as quickly as it came to me,

That slice of life from somewhere

Long ago and just imagined

Dissolves into the curling wind,

Fringed shawl no longer tangible,

Dark eyes shuttered, voices quiet, and

The battered covers closed.

The firelight fades, the hearth grows cold,

And real although it was for some long and

Vibrant moments, Brodsky’s dead, his gypsy vanished,

With nothing left but timelessness,

Visitation inexplicable and fading.

Outside now the wind picks up,

I strain to hear faint tolling bells

From an old church on some far and blown cold shore,

And coming from the Maritimes,

I pause and sniff the air

The memory smells of salt.