Near

Finally the

Quiet, 

I've used up

Every 

Shred for the fray I have;

If I don't listen to

This quiet I won't know what

I've been 

Feeling

I recall the 

Colors of a memory,

Sounds I've heard

Sometimes 

Just outside 

Perception,

Pulses of the 

Ground shifting, and

I'm 

Beginning to 

Find my footing 

Feeling into Night

Cresting the hill to the one

Rising behind the red barn

On Updyke Road, 

A fire of burning moon

Etched my sending-lines in gold,

As I bloomed into

The glowing half-orb,

Illuminating the architecture of

Bare trees in winter, the road

Rounding onto Stillwell and 

The sheen into a troubled heaven

Comforting turmoil, regret, carrying

Trepidation and loneliness into

The deep hills that bridge this

World and the next, folding 

Me back into a slow dance along a

City sidewalk in a moss of 

Still remembrance.

Three AM

You get old

And you think you're 

Not beautiful 

Anymore 

And you look outside

And you see ages of living 

And constancy

And the trees bloom such

An architecture

And the land rolls its

Sublime contours

And then you begin

To instruct yourself in 

A miasma of light 

And dust and mist 

It floods your heart

Into seeing 

Beyond sinew and pulse

Into the grace of infinite

Looking out my bedroom window

As I try to calm myself 

I see, yes, there is always 

Moon in some part of the sky

And the map of the great dome

Is there for the taking

And no point at all to be old.

In this life, it does not matter.

I am that moon

That sun. 

Those stars. 

That sky.

We are.

We were.

We always will be

Until none of this is 

Anymore. 

Ways of Seeing

I take a picture

In my mind's eye:

The snow of the night

On the snow covering the night
As far as I can see, these fields.

I breathe deeply, 

Breathing, I see the 

Chiaroscuro. 

Not so long ago

I'd perhaps have said it's 

Negative.

Now no such thing,

Nor no such thing 

As black and white, for 

Without chiaroscuro I could not 

Live in color, as beauty is only
Perfection in the grey mist of 

My floating, carrying world, 

The one I choose to carry 

As best I can, 

Mystic symbiosis, 

And so whatever I do

Or say becomes just 

Coloring my life

As I see it,
I guess through

The shadows, though 

I already understand quite a bit 

About the highlights, and I 

Understand our this,

About the small, disappearing 

Journey. 

Resolving

On a night in the time of

Christmas, we sit after midnight in 

A room surrounded by the 

Belongings of our dead, 

And oh there is comfort

And the fire flickers messages

That all of those we know 

And cherish and pray for

See, in their fires.

Still,

There is no 

Special message, save in

This one, in this ending year:

My relatives, I pray for you,

I think upon your lives, and mine,

I join your hopes and your praying

And I too build my fires, 

And I too watch, as in this 

Eternal, everlasting flicker,

Pulling us all back to 

Essential,

Goodness and mercy,

Striving all the days of our lives,

We arrive here, 

Here in this 

New Year.

Solstice Eve

So I came out tonight to sit in this 

Christmassed conservatory, 

The tree near-perfect but for bare spots,

We all grow and have our bare spots.

Paper whites blooming here, and 

Summer stragglers building to next spring,

Rosemary in pots,

Hibiscus

And jasmine maybe, bougainvillea 

That I brought in for winter.

And out here, in a small pot

A peacock's feather and a very small 

Painting, from Haiti,

In the painting the children are

Playing with swords. 

Our friend brought us these things.

He wrote history about Haiti, fiction,

Voudon, and 

About France.

And I put the peacock feather

Into the small pot,

With tall curly twigs

I've kept because they're so pretty

And a year or two later, lo, the twigs

Had small, pale mossy leaves on them

Airborne, quite literally, no 

Living medium except air's alchemy

Nurturing organics of the earth that every

Spring time bloom,

And so ten years on, I will not 

Change much, or mess with this

Infinitesimal grand plan thriving 

In a certain light

In a certain place in this old

Farmhouse, knowing,

Finally, as I do here in this mystery 

That I am but a nanosecond, 

Just passing through.

December Sadness

I walk away and I think a little bit,

I think about the horrid

State of affairs in the world and 

How I cry and pray

How I try to hold

Whatever my constellation is

Together 

I find myself in this strange, urgent prayer,

And not necessarily suddenly, but 

All of a sudden something else 

Joins that supplicating reverie, 

And becomes

As alive as all the other transcendent pleas: 

Walk through my door.

Say hello, say goodbye, I really

Don't care; just

Walk through my door.

The dark grows longer 

Even as the light begs

Embracing. 

I struggle as best I can, but 

The closer I get to mortality,

The more I feel the 

Longing setting in.

Tomorrow I'll fume about

The dogs, the slick roads 

Really reasonable and stressful things,

Knowing somehow 

I'm hijacked.