Mar 7, 2011 | Haiku, Poetry |
Sweet Cloud on deep green, white dog is diabetic, as sweet as ever Mail I wait for the mail with a child’s hope – I want word from all I have lost Robin Chicks I approach the nest where robin chicks wait for food – robins dive bomb me So Hot So hot, so muggy – but why can’t I even think? what ‘s happened to me? Inner Jungle In inner jungle I find words beautiful as birds of paradise Door Each garden holds, hides a door to Eden, but how to find it, pass through? Tall Tall slender grasses sway in summer breeze and shed mists of silver seeds Basil First week of summer, hot and humid, basil thriving as if this were home Miracle Ordinary I try to record what I call the miracle of ordinary Between Patients Alone with Montaigne I wait for the next patient to bring news of now 100 Degrees (Fahrenheit) In the heat of day breezes still whisper softly in deep forest shade New Pieces Being with myself is a perpetual puzzle – new pieces each day Almost Think The heat of day breaks in late afternoon and I can almost think now Small Words I mumble small words and then can not decipher what I may have meant Soft Fingers Evening breeze enchants with soft fingers on my cheek as moon’s a gold hint Neither Here Nor There I went wandering I was no longer here and then no longer there Pale Purple In the midst of mint, morning glories are blooming, white and pale purple Independence? Queen Ann’s Lace trembles...
Dec 18, 2010 | Free Verse, Poetry |
As if with a bit thrust into my mouth, as if with a bit lodged deep in my mind, a story takes me wherever it wants, not rider but horse, not rider but horse A story dissolves me and resolves me into what I’m not by an alchemy that discovers no philosopher’s stone but finds instead a stoned philosopher There is no way back, there is no way back, a story is a chronic infection, a story is a cosmic infection, there’s no cure for its ravishing allure Day after day I’m the story I tell Myself, bit after bit, silver and...
Dec 5, 2010 | Free Verse, Poetry |
I am watching the fire take, listening to oak kindling snap as first plumes of white smoke thread their way up through the logs of sweet cherry wood that will be substance of this blaze then come slight orange tongues of flame that have no words and also no feet but dance with phantasmagoric verve without least inkling of what they do – dead tree is its own funeral pyre thick braids of smoke shade of cloud rise to lose themselves in summer sky and the fire clears, is more orange than it has been, more fierce, more fixed on the work of consuming the wood I feel the heat that I have unleashed warming my cheek from four paces I find myself overcome with awe, not that I have not done this same incendiary act hundreds of times, not that I have not felt this awe many times before, even cherished it as a way into the mystery of what is ordinary and extraordinary all at once, how fire is destructive and creative both the wood wanders its way to ash, past the flickering and glowing coals that seem to have an inner life as they have inner light and heat, become coated with elegant gray I watch the fire and know that I am watching myself, that I can no more tarry on the way than the wood can, that I know as little as does the wood, that where I’m woven, I’m...
Dec 5, 2010 | Free Verse, Poetry |
I am in the prime of my life because each instant is prime, not reducible to any factors, but simply stubbornly itself I have accumulated age, carry it now with me and within me I’ve been through more than I can say, although I try to speak This instant of December near the winter solstice, gray, twilight coming down early, has a freshness, even a sparkle, a way that I am prime with myself within the vessel that I take for myself – I hear melodies I can not sing, frame scene after scene I can not paint I am with myself as darkness descends, no stars tonight but the scent of wood smoke mixed with the scent of skunk, fading No instant can pass for another but each one passes for itself, and is replaced by yet another, incommensurable, vast and...
Nov 27, 2010 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Summer is becoming autumn. Even before the equinox, the days have cooled and become bright and breezy… The ground is littered with acorns. The squirrels are busy. I see a bronzed praying mantis. The first leaves, scouts for the coming armies, slant down to land on the green of grass. There is one red as a cardinal. A new moon climbs up late behind a bank of oaks to the east. The great blue heron is so still that it seems a part of the half submerged branch on which it stands. The monarchs have passed through. My white beard prophesies snow and springs I will not see. What has changed through my seasons? Not so very much – same quality of attention, same quality of intention, same quality of invention Yet I’ve been always in flux. I dance away from myself without...
Nov 25, 2010 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Nymph of an oak slips from ring to ring, dances from where the bark meets the air to the central rings, which are the beginning after the wild burst from acorn’s inspiration and hold still the green joy and exuberance Nymph is a changed nymph in each ring where she lingers and does not so much remember as recover, return to this ring’s seasons, its spring and summer and fall, winter snow and stillness and deep sleep So many springs’ waking, so many red buddings, so many tender new green leafings out, so many leaves lifted up to take in what the lordly sun spews out, so many deep green leaves, sweet...
