I see how quickly my small life passes.
My old dog wonders what the hell
he’s doing out here at 3:00 a.m.,
yet he lies down in the grass,
curls up beside me, unquestioning,
loyal as any star dog.
After watching this cosmic light show,
I come to the thought
that it’s not important how long a light shines;
the wonder is that there is light at all.
Working Women
It’s only been recently
that 7-11s
have occupied the same universe
as the Pleiades sisters and Cassiopeia.
I’d like to think these women,
luminous and heavenly beauties,
cook thoughtfully and organically,
wouldn’t just stop and pick up
some microwave enchiladas for dinner
while gassing up their cars
after the commute home from work,
but as the old bard once said,
in paraphrase, that is,
there’s a lot more goin’ down
than we’ll ever know, eh?
Cat as Zen Master
The weather report on the radio,
the radar display on the computer screen,
the roiling clouds beyond the tamaracks
signal heavy rain, lightning, thunder and wind.
The cat knows this as well as I do,
though his information comes from sources
to which I have no access.
He sleeps with his head on the window sill,
unconcerned, practicing Zen Master that he is,
living in the present, as always,
while I fret about working in the rain tomorrow,
trees falling on the roof tonight,
hail stones shredding the garden my wife loves so much.
Hail Storm
A hail storm flattened your garden,
shredded rhubarb leaves and lilies,
icy shrapnel exploded tomatoes,
snapped pea vines, pelted pumpkins,
shriveled the bounteous harvest
you’d been visualizing
since sowing seeds in spring’s cool loam.
And though you mourn,
you bend back to work,
nursing and nurturing what remains,
with tender hands and tears in your eyes,
the way I know you’ll take care of me
no matter the storms ahead.
Evanescence
The sky is gray and white
as a nuthatch;
evanescent pink blossoms
blow off crabapple trees
like all the innocent
iridescent lives
that will fall today
all over the world,
absorbed like snowflakes
by the warm earth,
leaving a lingering sweetness,
a hope for apples.
The Same Beautiful Air
My wife asleep beside me,
two cats sharing the bed with us,
the dog lying on the floor,
a Christmas cactus near the window
and we’re all breathing
each others’ breaths,
sharing the same beautiful air
breathed by every other being
on this atmospheric planet.
And you know what that means.
A Speculation on Spiders
A great spider spins an invisible thread,
weaves an invisible web,
ties together every thing, every where, every when.
No one knows the entirety of this web,
where it hangs, what lies between its threads.
We perceive ourselves existing
in one time, in one place, on one strand,
but if we pay attention we feel a vibration,
music in the humming string to which we cling.
Some seek the spider,
some hide from her,
but no one can escape this web,
these shining, singing, silver strands.
Spider
takes no notice of me
bending over her weaving.
She weaves her way inward,
attaches silken cables to silken spokes,
waits for silver strings to sing.
Toads
In May
when it’s finally warm enough
to open bedroom windows,
toads sing all night,
voices hypnotic as choral bells.
I wish I didn’t need to sleep,
but the amphibians’ songs
become a lullaby,
then a soundtrack for dreams.
I open my eyes at first light,
the chorus of toads still singing,
and I’m not really sure
if I’m awake or still asleep,
alive or dead.
Perhaps we exist in all these states at once.
Perhaps being is a song we sing to ourselves.
Perhaps we are the song itself.
A Serpent’s Lament
Give me a break!
I’m not a metaphor
I’m just a snake,
a serpent,
a creature of god, same as you;
friendly, all in all,
though I keep to myself.
To prove my good intentions,
I gave your wife an apple,
a beautiful, shiny fruit, finest on the tree,
that contains all you need to know to get by.
And what do I get in return?
Bad press—
the image of a slimy, slithering, hissy monster,
vipery, venomous, virulent,
something to be feared, killed if caught,
driven into the Irish Sea, for god’s sake.
How can you blame me
if I lose it now and again, bite somebody.
Give me a break.
I’m just a snake.
Wood Ticks
I know a woman who captures spiders
inside her house, then releases them
outside, unharmed;
she allows ladybugs
to huddle in a little orange ball
in a tall corner of the ceiling all winter.
She wouldn’t squish a spider,
but she picks ticks off her dog
or her own body
or mine
and flushes them down the toilet,
though she thinks they survive the ride,
like little body surfers, through the pipes
leading to the septic tank,
and she thinks the ticks
crawl out the tank’s vent pipe,
creep through the grass, looking for blood.
The Isle Royale Wolf Pack
A scenario no one imagined,
that the end could begin this way;
the alpha male, another male,
and one the island’s two females
taking an entire ecosystem with them
as they fell through a fragile crust of ice,
mystery and mystique disappearing with them,
into an old mine shaft, abandoned in 1853,
leaving a single she-wolf in a hopeless pack.
Stars shine on trackless snow;
a song without a chorus sung
on the longest winter nights.
Even the island’s moose,
pawing for grass beneath crusted snow,
may feel a nameless emptiness
at the absence of a song
that fills them with fear.
Cascade Falls
The waterfall seems to say
I wish I wish I wish
but I wonder if it’s the water speaking
or that voice in my head,
always wishing for something,
trying to cast a spell or blessing
on the two of us
because we have the audacity
to walk in this slippery stream
on feet made of clay.
Cascade River
Below the falls
the river riffles and warbles,
goes on and on
about how it has to run off,
though it dearly loves
the smooth skins
of these boulders and stones
it’s been polishing
since the glacier’s retreat.
Bottled Water
A hot wind wicks away the water
from a person’s skin,
empties the aquifer of internal water, too,
after it takes the surface lake of sweat.
Replenish, replenish,
the experts say,
eight glasses a day—
advice only for the fortunate
who have no need to carry water
from a sporadic seep
or a polluted well ten miles away;
wait in line at a tanker truck
in a refugee camp
with a chance the truck may run dry
while waiting with a jug full of dust
and nothing they can say to their children
while the person in front of them
is happy to be getting the tank’s dregs
for her babies to drink.
Ever think of that when you turn on the tap
or twist off the cap of the bottled water
you bought to quench a thirst
that is the mere drying of morning dew
on the shore of a vast lake?
At Gloaming
Watching four deer
come out of the woods at gloaming,
graze in a pasture, purple
with alfalfa flowers and twilight,
a woman, finally able to sit a minute,
breathes the sweet evening;
her sleeping children, awake in her thoughts,
bringing their own kind of peace.
Words are not needed,
though some might call this moment tranquil,
poetry.
Conjecture
The doe’s back was raked raw,
claw marks, it seems,
but what would do such a thing, and how?
A cougar, I conjecture,
leaping from a limb onto her back,
but how did she shake it off
and why no bite marks on her neck?
I wonder, was that same doe
the matted pile of hide
and scattered bones I found
when the snow melted?
And why did she return to memory
six years later—
a kind of re-birth for the sake of a poem,
a lesson in mortality sent by some local god?
A Small Kindness, This
An anonymous passerby,
someone on their way to work,
perhaps some bicyclist,
took the time to remove the cat,
hit by a car in the night, from the roadway,
place it in the ditch among wild violets
before more tires, feasting crows,
and other agents of decay
could begin their work on the carcass;
a small kindness, this,
to foster a measure of dignity
during these times of anonymous death,
unmarked graves.
Maple Syrup Time
With a blessing we enter the woods,
trudging through fresh-fallen snow,
knee-deep and sparkling, rejoicing
under sky the color of a bluejay’s wing;
tree markers, drillers, tappers,
bucket hangers and harvesters,
humbly and gratefully reaping the gift
of soil and water and sun
given us by acer saccharum,
the generous sugar maples,
casting their shadows,
like a forest of sundials on settled snow,
telling us it’s time for making maple syrup!
No Help
October’s golden tamaracks
return yellow light to the sun,
clear water gives back blue
borrowed from the sky.
A luxurious mink,
fur, wet and glistening,
bursts onto the scene,
a cameo appearance,
a teaser, suggesting purpose of being
as it rustles through dry cattails,
a destination seemingly in mind,
so unlike browsing deer
moving from one green leaf to the next,
the way so many people
seem to move about their lives.
Though there are many theories
as to its pertinence,
there seems to be no help
from the producer or director of this scene,
left to the viewer to find whatever meaning,
if any, there is to be found in blatant mystery.
Apprentice Gods
We spend the afternoon
rolling rocks down a sandy scree slope
at the base of Orphan Mesa,
laughing like little children
as the stones tumble and jump
until lying still as gravestones
when gravity exhausts itself on level ground.
We play at rearranging the landscape
as if we are apprentice gods, practicing on stones
before learning to stir water and wind
into floods and hurricanes,
shake the earth into quaking, just for a laugh.
Tomorrow, we decide,
we’ll plant trees and heal the scars of erosion,
maybe pick up trash along the highway
on our continuing quest for divinity.
Mending Mittens
Mending my leather mittens
for the third time this winter,
I sew them with waxed string
made to repair fishing nets,
hoping they’ll last
until the splitting maul rests
against the shrunken woodpile
and the hoe and spade come out of the shed.
I find myself praying.
Blessed be those who have laced together
the splits at the seams of this world,
repair its threads of twisted waters.
Blessed be those who stitch together
the animals and the land,
repair the rends in the fabric
of wolf and forest,
of whale and ocean,
of condor and sky.
Blessed be those who are forever fixing
the tear between people and the rest of life.
May we all have enough
thread,
may our needles be sharp,
may our fingers not throb or go numb.
May each of us find an apprentice,
someone who will take the needle from our hands,
continue all the mending that needs to be done.
At the Arboretum
This summer day is a woman
wearing a blue bonnet, green slippers
and a floral print dress;
she tends to beds of black-eyed susans, blue-eyed grass,
purple coneflowers and climbing clematis,
a garden of phlox, ox-eye daisies;
a bower of blue spruce, Japanese yews,
chestnuts, walnuts, butternuts and hickories,
a lawn of pampas grass and sarsaparilla.
This day, I spend with two women who love me,
each in their own way;
two women I love,
each in their own way.
One brings me wild rice,
one pays for my lunch.
I can’t comprehend any of it—
the way earth and flower
eat each other, but neither dies.
I don’t understand love, either;
that comes in as many colors and shapes and aromas
as flowers in a garden, trees in a woods, grasses on the prairie.
Grasses Rustling
Beauty has become an app
in an oxymoronic place
called virtual reality.
Thoughtful thought is passé,
lost among bits and bytes;
truth is subjective, irrelevant.
And poetry,
oh god, dear, dear poetry
doesn’t know it’s dead
among the corpses of words unsaid,
goes on being written in grasses rustling,
spoken by the wind.
Coneflowers
Prairie coneflowers
purple and yellow
petals hanging
like the folded umbrellas
on a closed bistro patio
attract honey bees
and monarch butterflies