Jade

On an apple-dappled early fall day,

Clear, brisk, high skies, and wind that

Made the turning, just-harvested 

Cornfields magic in their windy dance,

We were driving with some serenity,

Arriving, she walked with Sarah, back

Towards the sunny apple orchards,

Tugging on

A leash worn never, really, except to

Visit this country vet or go to see family,

But the wind blew her ears back,

And the sun was on her face,

And, Sarah said, she was bursting 

Into the light, she knew that it was coming, just 

As I unhinged myself into the dread,

And went somewhere where I needed to go, 

And then the right arrived. 

Beautiful dog of the earth of this place,

You formed us here, near 

As long, you were,

As we are. 

Here, on this road, in this garden

This pond and rotting, rooting 

Piles of history, you will always live.

All breathing creatures cherish home

In their ways, not all, leaving, take it

With them. 

You are here, sweet girl. 

You are home. 

RIP Jade

2002-2018

Leaving Dover

A moody sky, some spitting rain.  

I write the letter.

I’d booked passage on a packet

Nimble enough for straits,

Sturdy enough 

For heavy seas,

Crossing oceans, 
The fearful tales about 
Roiling unknown waters 

Taking on less freight

Because age leavens just such cargo.

Dearest, I write, 

The seabirds appear and 

Flit across the bow,

I know that means land ho,

But maybe there is no more terra firma 

For a certain travel, so

I write to you in time’s shortening,  

Fulsome gift

Remember that nothing on this earth

Blooms without love. 

Hollyhocks 

Can’t climb the trellis outside the

Pantry window without love,

And love, like those unfurled velvets, has

Many colors, many longings, 

Many ways of being.

Don’t let anything dissuade your gaze

I am grateful, I write, that there are 

Worlds I didn’t know, 

Worlds that struck my speech

And left me watchful, 

Full of wonder

Perhaps I’m daft, I write,

But I’ll never really be old,

I’ll be shaped and riven 

By decades carving me

Into sky, into earth, my less and my more, 

Like elements and rock, like tides 

Eddying into trickles, tides again

Washing over

Everything that comes to us,

There is oneness, there is reason.

Stars bubble through this damp eve,

Grey cannot trick my mind. 

I know they’re out there, stars 

In a cosmos rich with currents,

Energies and unknown. 

I have gone away, but 

I tell you this, deepest and true, 

Love is never left on moor or down,

In mountains, though I tried;

It’s never left in desert, never left,

It just is, becomes into my 

Bones and sinews and heart,

Tears washing like a mighty river, 

Not from sorrow, 

But from release and understanding

In the quiet comes a fleeting chill:

When we go to stars, nothing matters.

Darling, I write, let mystery and the 
Ordinary hover, life’s tensile stitchery

I breathe my leaving caress

Into the twilight,

All I can do 

From this faraway world.

You find, when you need it

The peace

Of love’s abundant universe.

This I write

And this I promise.

Now the light has gone, grey gone.

Night comes on.

Sailing, I am sailing.

Rain

Verges on frightening

Long ago, it was rare to be afraid

So far, the old place is holding

A strangeness I can’t quite describe

Here, home, 

This old place

The way I feel

Feels like flying

Into rain, but doesn’t matter

You know, 

May as well love

Because love is

Melt

You hit some decades,

Begin to settle into your who, 

Then a few more years come

Along, and contrary to all

Sorts of conventional wisdom,

That says anyone can change 

That all things must change, 

That you believed, 

That you believe, 

That isn’t quite the case. 

I sit melting in a limbo,

Old dog dying limbo,

Garden bursting as it’s dying limbo,

Unbearable dew point limbo,

Fatigue in bone and sinew limbo,

In struggle limbo,

Shall I go here,

Shall I go there,

Shall I do anything,

Shall I take on the small tasks

That hallmark a day where 

I accomplish something?

Maybe this paralyzing feeling

That not everything must change

Is just my way of finding

A necessary hiatus

A time to gather bewilderment

Rue, confusions, regrets, 

Aches, desires,

Aspirations, the swelter of

Feelings and currents 

While I put the questions to which

There are no answers into

A chapter for inevitable review. 

Pause. 

In the deepened twilight 

Outside,

In a house unlit against the night, 

The familiar nighttime settles, 

And pulsing softly through

The windows, doors opened 

Everywhere to

The gift of any breeze,

Arrives the cooling scent of rain. 

Moment

Apples are blushing up
Falling to the ground as the goats bleat
Joy when their paddock fills with sweetness
(Peter rains fruits on them each evening).
The petunias that bullied my clay pots from
Taos have ceased the riot
Of their cascading blooming; I shall chop
Them down, when their leggy residuals turn
To rust, heralding an autumn, an
Autumn that still must arrive
Although this summer of fire and water
Has not been easy to apprehend.

I sit in my favorite spot outside
Watching wisps of clouds in tentative
White, greying into a blue that feels
Cool. We thought the heat was going to be
Unbearable, but it simply wasn’t.
I say to myself that those clouds aren’t
My left eye, although sight is going if I don’t
Tend to taking care of it,
Which I haven’t done.
My head hurts, the welcome certainty
That this is simply pain of being hungry,
Maybe too tired, and
Not the crisis of a planet.
Do you see how easily good
Intentions go awry?
I have so much to reclaim
And I can’t help one soul
Until my own reassembles.

Here, I say to small creatures,
Stealthy nighttime visitors,
Apples for you, a living pond, low some,
In spite of rain; rain damps
Under my bare feet the grass and weeds
Like velvet, tinctured green and
Striped by mower leavings’ browning.
I walk out towards the light.

In mercurial sky,
This leaving light gilds edges’
Cloudy universe of unending change.
Day gives way to nighttime,
Night gives way to dawn.

Untitled

A time now, everywhere

For balance. 

Hold steady, we are 

Pulling on the

Same side of the rope.

I can’t even process everything,

Probably because there is

A bit too much incoming

At this moment. 

I’m on the balance beam

A bit of damned 

Vertigo

But still

Something 

Beautiful

Peaceful

That thousand acre grassland in South Park

At near ten thousand feet 

Reshaped my sense

Of place, of everything
Except it all familiar 

Sinew and bone. Heart.

So lonesome 

Tu me manque

On the Western Slope

This grey morning, early,

Eyes open to a hillock 

Covered in sage and gorse,

Small white succulents dotting 

The dusty ground, 

Mountain lupine faint purple in the

Coming end of summer,

The mountains immovable 

Except of course they aren’t,

Glacial their changing, folly we

Think we see their constant.

Back down this western slope

Swaths of standing dead soon

Giving way to wildfire and in time

The aspen and an autumn

Gold of new. 

All things must change.

Skittering and full of purpose, 

Magpies glean the 

Jutting uplift,

Black and white, their bands 

Of iridescent midnight blue 

Flicker in this new day’s light 

Now blooming from the grey.

How to explain

A homeostasis lit by magpies and 

Sturdy wildflowers? 

No matter, it is gone to 

Call of day, a pause unbidden, 

A world contained and whole,
Gifted in the moment. 

August 13, 2018