How Age and Winter Lately

In some hurricane
with a troubled-cat name,
I'm scrying who will hear from me
a mindless tuneless whistle.
I've split the furniture
one patio set of my brain from another,
an old rail fence from the next desk.

It is the full moon
who assumes he know the forest,
even as his light lessens and is lost
over the course of narrowing crescents,
then returns chastened to wax
cracking into late autumn cold.
Leafless sycamores wave warning
in the ghostly snow of moonlight on earth.

Birches snapped three storms ago, we lost locusts
last year when the beech crown came down.
The owner of the pond took it with him
when he died about a month ago:
His daughter saw him walk on it the night he died.
I had to steal from Dali what sky I could paint.

Perception Into Intuition

This is not the whole story,
but more than food or phones,
geese in flight draw my eyes
away from the road, driving
to the cement block office
or some lush deciduous park,
its cold, moss-split stream falling
over the clef and staff of sedimentary stone.

And the moraine is not a whole story,
with granite and lime to one side,
black composite asphalt
coating the oak and ivy lined loop
up to the stick-built home,
where we reluctantly take firm steps
to ease the children 
from time's periphery into being people,
as distractive and astonishing
as if they'd taken flight.

In the picture book of our tale,
you’d see photons chip away at my skin
and know how the insulating details escaped
into a leaf-filtered sitting room,
the dust of inattention drifted in jackets
over chair backs and a week's stacked mail,
and, eyes glancing across my shoulder,
you'd noticed a drawing of goose down.

I incorrectly recall my life
as the life of the moon's atmosphere,
my empty night now packed with chlorophyll day,
the slantless unimpeded sunlight
burning into Taghkanik Hills, and if asked
will swear I had taken a cool morning cruise,
along which I thought only of love and
how to tell when love needs a teller.

Personal Ritual Sacrifice

Coyote-footed night swirls in
on swift dry clicks of oak leaves
dancing for the mustard sunset.

There's no telling what
I'm prepared to do with the vacant field,
fenced against lopers and trotters,
now navigated best by bats.

White tails will graze long after dawn tomorrow,
and rust-banded woolly bear caterpillars
flow into winter on sap's slowing tide.

I'll tell you the devices
of the spell I've etched in creek water,
if you promise to panic,
burn me at the stake, noon.

An Economy of Souls

Setting aside what you may think,

this water evaporating from their west

to precipitate over your east coast, you drink,

and bathe in what rises from their south sea

to course through your north mountain feeders.

 

Just so, as they there hunger, we grow weak;

when you have no home, he feels such cold;

she sleeps in fever, and you dream our demons.

Each wears the other's surplus clothes.

The shot and unburied bodies blot against our skin.

 

Understand: we breathe the same,

the same particles of air, as each breathes.

No distance stands between us, no difference. 

I plead for passage, you are my path past death,

to heaven, as I am yours.

I Am the Only Means of Escape

On this planet where starlight turns pink,
I capture a fleet Kelley's lily and amber rose,
a butterfly bush, burned and bright,
under the green frond-fringed bluebell sky.

Each mud or brown moss step differs
for distance against the evaporated canvas
of heat and fog in long morning air.

Soon an alien August sun
brooks low enough, bounding glare,
to toll the further tread into autumn,
hinting that least winter gray night
is warmer than weak light.

I advance on the fastening frost,
my red maples turn brilliant crimson,
sweet birches golden yellow,
sourwoods turn brick red,
all the yellow buckeyes orange.

Vance, Keeper of Earthquakes

My buddy Vance is a pipe-fitter.
He'll hang a handrail, yeah,
but he's certified to sweat 
copper, silver and stainless.

Vance got a gig across the state line
from Leatherstocking
on the north PA shale shelf
running gas rig hydraulic drills.

The family stays back at Catskill
so he takes his time off at the tavern.
Like migrant pay, he says, isn't it,
while the pockets are pumped out,

the kids make it into middle school
and Vance smokes seven dollar-
a-pack shit cigarettes real slow
since there's no rush to retire.

We expect some Elmira coroner
will open Vance up eventually,
either his heart or lungs gone,
and find the destruction of Dimock.

In Fog We Keen

In fog we keen to passing flax sails
stretched across the shoulders of a gale,
though wheeling tern and gull cry
with our same sea-washed throats,
reason slit insensate as coral slices sodden skin.

We only know the shallow world by spasmed reach,
where turtles are swift beasts,
where slicked green feeds the spark of trevally,
and granite crevice clamps on ballast sunk
unclaimed by half-beings, we hoarders of need.

Were your seafarers cast aside?
Perhaps we wanted those untended fires in the wind;
wanted more the roaring angels of wind,
who arrive by spar and cloth; or further,
the purpose of those angels, destination.

Variation on a Theme

                               - after W. S. Merwin

Thank you for the spare hair
holding the sword and the hard
hat reminder held crown height
for the corners of cinder block
or gypsum board from where
I have walked hiccupping grace
for the lawn cut away from the stone path
that creeps into the copse détente
of cherry and fir and the rotted poplar
feeding the irrepressible beasts
thank you for the festooning
laundry that starts in gift boxes goes
to rumpled poses and carries my daily crumbs
the invisible burbling code of bone
marrow become fluid blood
guiding my hands to tea
for the tea as heater tea as healer
the lingual turn from loud cantina crowd
to crow blatant on the road

This Bird, Some Time, That Road

Just west of Tuxedo,
Wildcat Mountain weathers
midsummer with dry brook beds,
our line of cars driving wily past
Indian Kill Lake peels a few locals
off to Pumpkin Hill Road
and the rest roll down to Warwick,
weaving deceleration.

Shoulder-side, a green racer escapes
ess-wise to the nearby
jagged granite wall.

Something happens, not grand:
a solid ripple rolls bright green
through the pond where the May
goslings needed no help hatching,
the grounded tercel feeds on
a frankly red and stringy squirrel,
bland, sufficient as the reedy
crane dipped knee-deep in bracken,
calm as the white kitten
sitting like a teed ball on the lawn.

A killdeer plover struts stiffly
across her widow's walk of river stone,
no fooling now.

At Hood River, chaparral heat shoos
rattle snakes into the cool streets.
I see an owl settle  where
some restless rodent didn't,
the rattlers too hot to hunt.
I am here to find an old man,
whom I will pull with the horn of my beak
through the bones of my feet
to fill my future skin and skull.

Not So Much Your Suicide

Winter grit gets kicked inside and
glitters at the open door's edge
where my shadow passes your death,

its truth how I hold the turned handle,
strip off this thin denim
and flinching, narrowed hood,

face unfurling before the rowed
pots of soaking cut begonias and
the estimable days they'll have.

I am dismayed more by belligerent
Spring, clinging first to the fresh earth,
where I'll fight for my next foot steps,

my weight of lessening consequence.

Di Rimborso della Bestia Trionfante

I recognize the Book of Genesis
now as a to-do list with some
low-hanging fruit already picked.
No need, for example, to cloud:
storming or fogging in the morning
has been taken care of.
The willow and wisteria stay thinned
among gnarled cherries and berries
in the north lawn, given mostly to moss.
And the children grow tall,
as they are supposed to do.

But there is clearing out and some
creaturely crying left undone
from the fifth day, and if not written
it's hinted that the stars
are to be used as semaphore,
a visible vow in the closely woven
firmament, so you and I can create
the blue moon, the red dusk,
and each eclipse return, equinoctial
as the wedded exiles we have become.

Planning Against Ignorance

We were wondering about how spring
and the wood thrush return, gentle
until their eggs need defending,
and my eyes crossed at the horrible thought
that I had to chase the chipmunks
from their warrens along the house
and down the side of the pool wall,
out of suspicious nests amid anthills
and under the unruly ivy.

The fluting thrush, at least,
try hiding higher.

Back-pedaling across the lawn
to see late July light whiten
old siding and pine rails,
the eaves-hung lettuce and basil
we part delicately and harvest
darken to violet in the on-set night.
I stop where the gate will be,
heft of the barely grasped rocks
will lay here, the ground unswaying.

I rely on the ground to stay.

Customs and Marriage

This family is fretting
the first gate, quietly demanding
of their pants and jacket pockets
the boarding passes they'll produce

for the disinterested inspector
whom I pass, losing sight
and the swirl of their soft panic,
until again at the flight gate

they are unstill,
searching out other pouches,
changing hats and draping
themselves in tassell-shawled

prayer, binding and unbinding
a final, recited security check
so they become indestructible
together.

North Through Stuyvesent Falls

The black and white mourners
move too fast across the cemetery,
I am afraid they'll regret how brief
was this cool Friday afternoon.

We learn from cinema
that movement is shift in perspective:
Uncle's unfocused eyes and stiff cowboy hat
over Aunt's chiffoned shoulder,

then black-vest, white-shirt Uncle in relief
against a muscular John Muir horizon,
billowed cumulus and permanent hills.
Grandmother up close is sunken and still,

reluctantly planning how to walk back
to Pats Lane through the tussocked fescue,
the wind-borne cottonwood seed
and virtually impenetrable may flies.

Collateral Labyrinth

All eight species of grass in the yard
fail under the umbrella of the maple,
and in unimpeded Kinderhook spring rain
mud now bubbles around the flat
black stones joined at the red brick wall.

These days our old dog legs north,
so I set those blocks to stand
in wet moss where roots knot up,
wobbling my best guess at a gait
to tread in the maze onward.

Vernal Migration

Before the cold broke this weak winter,
enough sun on anonymous deciduous trees
to lift hope into my nose
caught me mid step, ambivalent.

Cold lifting was so hard a shift in plan
that I grew madder in the bright parking lot,
and so broke into the garage to warm
at the weak electric baseboard.

I lifted drop cloths like rough disguise
away from weak ladder back chairs,
each old and irredeemable two inch
rib of wood broken under dust’s weight.

Tomorrow, should day break cold,
I'll wander in the warming dawn
about the reservoir, where a white cloud
of green apple blossom lifts into the hills.

Between Pieces

Stunned by winter's tympani
and how near as tapped mallets
the hail seems against glass,
there was plenty of time to hit

the buzzing oven alarm
on the trip down stairs,
picking up empty pop cans with
the pitched canvas kicks,

so I took a crossword guess,
made a phone call to mother
before attempting last week's dish sink
or water and a walk for the dog.

Easel lazes on spotted muslin
until the house chores ebb and let
sea foam swirl around my ankles,
yolk-yellow light my eyes.

Thank You, Maria Colvin

In a crater
in an apartment in Homs,
there is a satchel
of ripstop nylon
that will not melt
even at mortar temperatures,
covered now in pulverized stone -
a kit of necessity smuggled
to families become infernal

under a sin of shells arcing darkly
into hollow kitchens and gardens,
through air sick with your
last breath and the scorched flesh  
from scores of Syrians.

Save a journal,
what does a witness pack
that's not already abandoned
at the end of the world?
You've brought back all we can take:
a boy lies in his shattered street,
belly rising and falling until he dies.

nothing tastes like spaceman

We eat what aliens we might
sieve from our dark supposes.
They bring a tang of disbelief
to the back of the throat
when culled from those rickety
aluminum pie plate ships
flickering like fifties films
shot in the New Mexico skies,
peppered with far yellow stars.

Choosing Uselessness

The casement is all angles of maple:
sill, sash, top and bottom rails,
stile, stool and apron - solid wood.

Beside the window, branches
pound against the tide of the wind.
The moon cracks

the west crest of the canal,
plops down the poplar row
and rolls into the road.

Overhanging green swells closer
as heat and tree frogs screech
in the bell of the dark.

Stone in hand and wind-twisted,
I'm playing hopscotch
on the street chalk squares.