Winter Rose

Always My Winter Rose

These long years, 

Spanning the inexorable pace of this last decade 

I have quested treasure 

In the willing world, and found some,

As other seekers have, all 

Facing in some startle now 

Our own ending time

Considering 

What we take with us

As we move beyond the veil.

Love is love, that’s clear, and 

We’ll take that vast comfort 

Wherever we travel.

Knowing this,

The world smoothes back into 

How we go along. 

The weather across these long lakes

Where I live now

Is mercurial, but I know how to read it

It’s a barometer I learned 

On the plains, as I know you understand, but really, 

Isn’t this the way to

Navigate in the world? 

If one can’t understand the

Shifting winds, the changing skies, the roiling waters

One trusts the ones who do. 

Listening, I write to you and

I wonder when we start returning, 

And when the body

Rich and pulsing 

Flesh and blood, fears and dreams

Starts to turn to face a brighter light?

Even winter rose is beggar to the sky

Where lies the always-open door

For all we know it’s always there

And it’s only God who knows.

For Gretchen 

104 years old this day,

January 25, 2020

I love you with all my heart

Wrexie

January Midi

Are we about to re-start winter now?

This flirting around with temperatures

Strange winds to acknowledge or 

Account for,

A different odd bareness of the 

Trees and fields

I’ve been watching

On geologic time

Although

I’ve been here before,

These green, verdant winters. 

Later, I know, winter comes again

When the snow flies 

I don’t think about whether

Or not I understand

How spring, 

And as days pass in the slowness

Time acquires

I go along

Carrying with me 

Peace enough, and  

Wondering if I should

Pause 

Into being

This homeostasis,

My own blooming

I think I meant to say 

Myself

Fearing Parched

One night in 

A torrent of words

I was trying to find

An essence and found 

No essence 

Except the search

And my 

Trying to

Ignite in to light

The darkened spaces

For the dawning.

After all that,

Nothing is the same, 

Although nothing changes.

In the chaos of my life

Sometimes a beacon glistens

It has before

Though the lumen 

Does not come often, and is 

Often faint, 

But my rays, my synesthesia,

All the whos I am 

Now mix in with 

This new chord of light

I carry one afternoon,

Pale bronze against 

Gentle disappearing mountain,

Alive as western miles, 

Mountain miles, 

Sweep of plains miles

All spooled into vast,

Whole for you miles. 

The clock stops one beat

Mid-motion

Homeostasis. 

Early mid-December ‘19

Sent from my iPhone

A Different Kind of Narrative

Winter. Outside it’s beautiful, a dusting of snow & intense, subtle colors of December sky at twilight. Inside, a much different time for us this year. Thirteen months ago we didn’t know if P would even have an eye. He does. It’s not the color of his beautiful biologically gifted green, but it’s beautiful. He doesn’t see, but he retains the glory of color, shadow & space, tho reorganized in the uniqueness of his condition. There is no end in *sight* yet, but we’ve learned about how one sees what is really there, what doesn’t matter, & what, perhaps, shouldn’t be seen. A few weeks ago a huge wind brought down some large branches from one of our towering firs. I’ve been taking cuttings from the felled limb, bringing them inside, to serve for a bit longer, alive, still pungent. I started thinking about my dad, who was never bewitched by glorious little white lights, no matter the coaxing of our mother, & in fact the Christmas he died my sister & I put up a tree for him outside on the upstairs porch off his room, & we dressed it with colored lights. Tonight I adorned the kitchen mantle with greens from the felled fir, & colored lights, for you, Dad. And now, here our little tree, undecorated with the ornaments I love, the baubles & handmade things the children made, the nostalgic things that connect us back in time to memory & tradition & all that. Last year a tree was out of the question, but one dreadful night returning from Syracuse, filled with fears, prayers, all the things that bind trouble to reality, as I came down our road & took the turn by the creek where one glimpses the back of our house, I saw - behold - the twinkling white lights of a Christmas tree. Sarah & Robert came in, & in addition to taking care of mister Colby, birdie, & BillyBob our funny little goat all this terrible time, they knew we should have a tree. I burst into tears, & when P saw it, he burst into tears as well. So now we have a Christmas tree, beautiful in its simplicity and resonant with memory and gratitude, still awaiting the dressing that we cherish. P put the lights on. He said it wasn’t easy, because he saw multiples. Tomorrow I’ll bring all our memories round. I’ll decorate the tree.

Nothing changes. 

A World One Night

The women sit around a fire. 

They pull their shawls against the chill

The firelight warms their faces. 

In the near-distance, coyotes

Howl around their prey, 

Yipping dinner,

And overhead, beyond 

The crackle and the pop of fire,

Stars twinkle. 

There is mother, and 

The really old grandmother sits

Her sharp eyes seeing

Clusters of the Milky Way 

Moving through the Cosmos

Infinitesimal silvered dusts, 

Each mote a first breath, each a last

The sister sits with quiet, 

And there are others, they too 

Appear contemplative, staring into 

The ritual and comfort of the golden,

In this case, fire, the golden fire

But often golden sunset

Preceded by those holy

Pinks from the early 

Morning 

East

Digressing back, 

Some of them, the women,

Seem little more 

Than miasma, 

Though all reach for grail forgotten 

As the world veered 

Out of tilts,

The lessons of the grandmothers 

Ignored, discarded beyond memory; 

The price of negligence so dear,

The reckoning assured,

They know they’ll be the ones 

To settle up

On judgment day

They sit around the fire pit

Where the grass won’t grow

In between the gardens around

The barns and the rimming green

That surrounds the weeping formal, 

A garden of tears,

Their own tears 

Salting that patch of ground

Where life no longer thrives

At least for now

They know that love is not enough

Sometimes giving way,

Bending in an agony 

That only time and will can soothe,

And no guarantees at that 

Maybe all they seek

Is the logic of the mystery, 

Answers sparking as they’re calling to 

Ghosts of just what might have been,

What was, or to the whys that linger, 

Pointing deep to the no matters that 

Don’t matter anymore

And therein, truth indwelling 

The alpha and omega

Some things will never change, even 

As they ever grow and flicker

Embers for the coming flames.

Ether

Maybe this is the point of it

Trying to get to the end

Of whatever it is

And on the way find

These memories

Some not easy born

Dissolutions 

Strife and despair 

Memories are,

They are 

What is real,

And when they’re
So sometimes 

Beautiful

When they’re
Mostly 

Steady and forgiving 

Kind and generous

Leavened with compassion

They abide and

That’s the point 

Of it all, 

The ether of the
Truth. 

This Day

Cutting hydrangea in the 

Dark of the night sky, 

No light but 

Moonlight

They’re drying into late autumn

And how beautiful they are on the

Eve of my birthday. 

Peter brings me cut flowers 

And then I think

To also cut some holly

Brilliant 

Berries 

Red and disappearing as I turn

This way and that from and 

Into moonlight,

My fingers feeling the rough bark

Making my way to the place

Each stem grows away from

The branch before I clip

Tomorrow when the sky grows light

I’ll harvest more from this 

Bounteous patch of life that we tend, 

That we love, careful to give thanks,

And I might keep clipping, and 

Clipping, cutting and bringing in

Until the whole house is 

Filled with magic 

As the living, once living, 

Drying

Dying 

Take over every space,

Desiccating 

Petal and tendril, 

Still-supple living stem, her leaves

Crawling into the 

Corners and crevices, hooking

Into peeling plaster and uneven 

Floorboards—

Isn’t that the way life goes on,

Everywhere? 

Blooming, growing, surprising, 

Yearning, reaching, praying, balancing,

Accepting, praising and always, if we 

Give in, 

Lifting into light?