Untitled Night

A close heaven, fireflies,

A quickening storm,

Rivers and waters roil

Scattering across lakes

Up toward the Maritimes

Down along the Missouri 

To the Mississippi and the Gulf

It’s not as green out there

Past Ogallala and Arapahoe,  

Brown down toward Durango

He says, idling in the conversation

I do recall, I say, and

Peblo. I like to say it that way.

I am of the land and dirt

Seeking water in arid landscape 

As I seek footing in stars

I see in this gift of life

That change waters the landscape.

In the west the thunder grumbles

I feel the shift of wind

I don’t need a weather alert

To move inside,

The rain serious now.

In a bit less rain, we watch 

Heat lightning as it lights 

The west again,

A western sky

In beckon: 

Come, now, it calls.

Time for you to go. 

On the Way to Dark

The many years, lifetimes

I’ve been lost in sunset

Missing moon rise 

A thank-you God moment or two

I sit in the orchestra as the bullfrogs tune 

And I notice how quiet my dog is,

Gunnar accompanies me

I hush, hush 

He speeds to check whatever rustles 

The brush in the pasture behind us

Behind the pond, 

Dodging under the 

Sweet ancient apple tree 

He’ll return to sit,

Near-motionless, watchful, 

Though I’m not altogether sure 

He knows this moon

This moment, 

This quiet,

This slice of changing light is his,

Although I know

It is mine. 

Tu me manques 

Dearth

Busy, the humming insights,

The reordering in my head of

Those important reverberations 

Upon opening into 

Light, unexamined pathways

I begin to wonder 

I might say 

Wander toward, into a

Strange question:

Are your ponderings

The way a woman like you

Sensibly reflects,

Or are they a little daft?

Perhaps so. 

But what do we know of 

Beyond peril, of some kind of 

Wholeness if 

The spacings that

Shake off conventions

Don’t mean anything?

Landscape

On a night of insights 

Stepping into frigid

I turn my back to wind

I’ve had a notion

Most of my life 

About horizon, space, 

The vast as far as I could see

In the growing up, 

Wind across the plains

Constant in

The calling spaces

Now mighty wind

Rags my shoulders but

I don’t care, nor do I 

Turn to look out into  

Snow carried in this  

Night’s wildness 

And I can’t explain it,

Anything about it, but it

Falls upon me, 

Perspective

February 15

Portland Air

I was going to Portugal 

Walking on a forest path past a small 

Whitewashed stone house 

Somewhere in Switzerland 

Fragrant pine needles under my feet

I recalled traversing that narrow byway

One time before, and it was pleasurable 

A safe connector

First, tho, I had

To find the plane, and 

No one selling candy and Dramamine 

Behind the counters in the crosshairs

Of the airport

Quite knew where it was 

When I was asking

Where to find that plane.

But I saw a wide opening, an 

Airport arch into a long ramp, 

Bright sky awaiting, 

Beckoned, I walked toward 

Light beyond a marshy shore; 

There, rough seas suddenly calmed to glass, 

Lapping waters, a small raft waiting

Someone held my hand and 

I tiptoed thru the shallows 

And found an open seat

I mean, a place for me to sit, as we 

Paddled to the plane on a tarmac 

On a reef altho 

I do not know for sure

One thing though, I remembered to bring

A large sheaf, of art and drawings, 

Papers, blank spaces, to be filled with 

Whatever might be coming 

At first I thought they might be mine

But I gave them to a boy beside me

He too seemed to be a voyager

In search of larger understandings

The waters were grey then, as we 

Slipped moorings

And I woke up.  

Seeming to Arrivie

In that indiscriminate hour

Not dawn, nor midnight, 

When voices close & far quiet

And there is sleep across

A hemisphere where 

My mind searches for

Salvation as I struggle toward the vast,

I woke to light, and

Gunnar barking

And then he slept again

What if such small ordinary

Instances

Are just the 

Wake! 

Wake, You! 

Wake and Listen calls, the shift

Of tone, as my deep chimes on the 

Old side porch, oldness of the wood

Behind them, the soft reverb 

Of alto peale from changing 

Wind, not harbinger of anything, or

Small startle of headlights when

She drops off the newspaper as she’s done

For decades, this time 

Delivered to the mailbox 

A bit early, 

A bit late

Nothing to mind about, no need to fret,

Mundane rhythms 

Reminding me to sometimes 

In the deep of neither night nor day

Just be awake. 

I don’t know what happens tomorrow

Or in one month

One year, one allotted lifetime

To think I do is folly to the 

Larger pulse

That light, though, 

Could have maybe also been 

Just one of the young guys

In the next section, 

Lost, a little drunk, 

Turning around, wanting 

To go home. 

I think I shall cleave to these 

Simple explanations: 

The earth spins on her axis,

This too shall pass, 

Upheaval, and 

I like to imagine that

The learning got from loneliness 

And the shortening of time and memory

Tips us toward assembling

Another kind of light. 

 

 

Going Somewhere

 On the western side of daybreak

Opalescence in a winter sky, 

The faintest shimmer, soothed upon

The raw of waking early to what 

Was not remembered during sleep

Another day beginning 

With fists of fear and fury 

Claiming sentience best understood as 

Rough passage, though passage still,

Translucence the only certainty,

As the moment slips

Into the waiting morning.

I decide to sleep a little longer

In a room where sunlight chastens 

The dark corners, the ones defined, and

Those that are not, as well

Behind my drowsy lids 

This hope arrives again

I tell myself that 

One can never know 

The plans of a new day.

December 30

Sent from my iPhone