Being Here

Sitting tonight outside

On a tattered winter-struck patio

Not yet rescued by broom 

And potted things

I’ve mowed the long hardy grasses, weeds 

Twice now in this long

Recalcitrant spring

I’ve noticed many bluebirds

Fewer robins

And this afternoon spotted

My first little brown toad of the season

Hopping away from the 

Frightening sounds of my mower

And truly, watching, as I carefully turned 

Away from her hideout in

A clump of unruliness around

The smoke bush back by the barn. 

The sun is descending and small grey 

Scattered cumulo stratus nimbus fill the 

Western sky behind the firs that keep

The dust from from Bobby’s plowing from 

My windows, opened

Momentarily to admit spring cleansing before

I close them up

For an unseasonably chilly night

The dip in the back 

Opening amongst long, tall

Stands of spruce and fir,

My alleé I call it there, though just an 

Unkempt magic land of burrows, 

Rotting stuff, rust chuff 

From ancient evergreens

Carpeting a path, well-known 

By generations of animals, and 

Through this window 

Bits of peach and gold from the

Disappearing day cast

A blaze 

Nonpareil 

An instant that 

Beckons belief

My hands are cold and

It’s time for dinner. 

May 18, 2019

Mother’s Day

The blood can catch up, 

The Hurley stubborn in me

Don’t want to go anywhere

Don’t want to go no mo 

This old fabric of land 

Here rent

With memory 

What we could never know

Except that it comes alive, the

Place just blooms, 

The air, the light and the

Dirt shifting

Thinking to temper obdurate,

Some kind of self taps at 

The wild, taps on the window

Look, see this vastness

Loves seem to bloom

From deep down into those

Sighs, long those shadows, and all 

So beautiful in

The sun

May 7, 2019

Accident

Working on a theory

Borned from some trauma,

Most immediately that of

Accident and bad luck

Becoming as bad as bad dream 

As an unwelcome life of it all

Took root,

Defining

Day, night and all the in-between moments

Of fear, doubt, what now and

So forth. 

The thought occurred to me as 

I took a photo of myself as I do

Most everyday, in perhaps a vain

Moment hoping to capture a small

Shrinking of a scary hematoma on my

Forehead,

And I tried to think of another word 

For it that wouldn’t be so jarring,

But there isn’t one.

I started to think about stepping 

Back and away,

As I more or less have done 

I too fight to save Mother Earth

And the people I love the most are so
Clear in their relentlessness

But I did step back, step away,

I had to, for whatever reason, a 

Near-miss, though perhaps I’ll heal

If I am mindful and do as I am told. 

Talking with a friend who let go

The disillusionment of comraderie

She, bleeding hope and passion and

A justice maybe just beyond,  

She said she had to turn away, for now

Or for how long, actually she didn’t say. 

It’s not just about the struggle

Some of us sometimes

Must turn to face another in another light,

The one that glows in the pit of 

Stomach, heart, essence, 

And so stepping quietly amid

The shards of betrayal and avarice

Dissonance and the flat hollow note 

Of someone else’s torque, 

We leave to find in witness and

Introspection a ground as vibrant

And authentic as any solidarity,

Only solitary

I felt this, briefly swirling in the static,

And with a grateful heart, I 

Vowed to try to share that there

Is power and vital balance when

All is said as best one can before the ring 

Is tossed to stars and hope, holding breath and 

Praying for the unseen hands stretched 

To take it up for a time, knitting the 

Intention into belief that something

Bigger waits for bigger breath. 

On His Birthday

I asked you what you wanted

For your birthday; it’s now arrived 

This early spring day, 

And you shed some tears

And said,

“I want my sight back,”

And that stymied me:

Now what? 

And then I began to think

Perhaps 

You do have sight.

I mean, this trauma has delivered

Insight and patience, 

Resilience embedded in 

The lessons of never quite knowing, 

The lessons that one really doesn’t want 

To have to learn,

The inchoate lessons that 

Emerge to keep one going.

Faith floats out there

On a heretofore unknown horizon

It’s not sharp or clear, and muddies 

Contours that already are not crisp,

But there waiting is a different promise

That one hopes to never realize

Because the price of such clarity

Is too dear to contemplate. 

So you just keep on

And you find 

I think, perhaps 

That thrive is a goal tinged

With the golden fog of hope,

And the slow dawn, the 

Process of a dawn that tells you that 

You are just fine. 

You see all 

You need to see. 

And you continue on. 

~ Peter, April 25

Missing

Look how full the pond is, Jade,

You can stand at the end of the dock 

As you watch for fish, they’ll be close to

The gleaming still surface with the

Sun soon bathing the greening land, 

Dragonflies flitting and new scents 

Catching your nose, 

Just now I saw our big blue heron

Lift off from the banks as Colby 

Trotted slowly around the other side

He’s an old dog now

I imagine he was looking for you, 

Maybe felt you, heard you calling,

As did I, but he’s all right. 

I stand outside for a moment, 

Wind in my hair,

Recalling how you

Always settled that one early spring day,

When season’s changing finally bursts

Relentless winter’s stops and starts, all

Giving in to spring, 

Wading in the shallows of the pond, then 

Your belly on the warming ground, 

You summoned the essential wonder 

Your brindled coat with liver ticking 

Glossy, smooth as 

Satin and your amber eyes 

Seeing all, and looking back at me.

Matinicus with Anne, April 2007

There is too much incoming need, 

So I start looking at old photos

Years of many springs, and I come
Across a photo of Anne in
Her muck boots striding on an
Island road

I recognize that stretch
And her steady pace

I am trying to find

That place around here that 

I thought about

Last summer maybe, in a poem

Maybe in my heart, I

Can’t recall, but where I am going to 

Plant more cherry trees

Soon Spring

It took me a long time to get 

Back here, back home

It helps that the sky is bright from
This moon

One way or the other,

As I sat here tonight

Recentering into what I can’t quite say,

I saw what I’d been doing, 

Casting away, reimagining and

Figuring out this new way forward

Whatever it is, and

A little tweak of light sparked

From the back, beyond the main barn

Night vision kicked in

As hints of color

Emerged in the bright black

Lit night sky, 

Spring coming on, and as I 

Thought about this place

My sweet old girl

Ticked through the air

She has started coming 

Around now and then

And I paused to think about her,

Perhaps I scratched her ears, and 

Raising my eyes to the

Skies through the back window

There they all were, flying big

As life in their green gold years

Beautiful in that light, our fat sheep, 

Our goats, their black tipped ears,

Dogs leaping into the pond

Racing to catch a thrown stick

Flying into the field from the open doors
Of the barn’s threshing floor,

Trotting the property line in goodbye

I am wrapped in miasma, 

The animate residue 

Of this old farm, from which

I lift and I let go,

Carrying who and what

I won’t relinquish into the

What will be will be 

It was the most extraordinary moment 

Of souls alive 

The ones that stayed

And others, flooding into 

My calming heart

Finding that its steady beat

Is theirs, with mine, 

Is ours.

March 21, 2019