Friday, March 23, 2012

[polishing . . .]



 
polishing
old silver
I find the past
tarnishing
my hands


Ribbons 7:4, winter 2011/2012

Friday, March 16, 2012

Field Guide

Here among the blue hills—
creased, battered, worn,
ground down to earth
and melding into sky,
raked and scrubbed by sun
and the swiftly scudding
shadows of bright clouds—
here among blue hills
I need a field guide to the light:

Ridge Light:  pale blue
tessellations caressing
the sinuous mountain’s spine.
Smoke Light: falls straight down
among the silent shafts of trees;
lights each dust mote rising.
Rain Light: shatters into droplets;
reflects the many colors of the soul.

Print it small on leaves
as thin as gamma rays
yet still its pages, numberless
as stars, would never fit my pocket
as I walk out among the waves
and particles of paradox,
the shards and shimmerings
that so accost the eye—

Brook Light: burnishes alike
the pool, the eddy, the fool’s gold,
and the seaward-running flow.

Light, Species Unknown: 
Emitted by dark mica
and the white moth’s wing at dusk. 
Penetrates the shut lid,
illumining the dream.

Written River Winter 2011

Saturday, March 10, 2012

[five haiku]


                                        
hummingbirds—
the photo frame
always empty



            chorus frogs
            pooling their sound
            the air rings



                        all afternoon
                        pruning apple trees—
                        lichen-crusted elbows




                                    long lines of leaf-cutter ants
                                    follow the forest into itself

                     

                                                leap year—
                                                waking to find my life
                                                a little longer  




(written for National Haiku Writing Month 2012:   NaHaiWriMo)
   


Saturday, March 3, 2012

Along Aquohee Creek


In the syllabary
Sequoyah made
for his peoples’ tongue,
the marks that stand
for rivercane
look like letters spelling
Tao, the Way—
the way this relict patch
of rivercane still stands
shoulder to shoulder,
rooting the riverbank to home. 
The way the people
wove it into their homes,
their baskets, and their lives.
The way the cane,
when hollowed,
sent flying home the darts
fletched with thistledown,
and all the fluted
notes that echo
home to the hearts
still hidden here
among the sycamore’s
white bones.
The way the turkey hen
bustles in canebrake
and the meadow
runs with quail. 
The way the water
rings the heron’s leg
with gold and flows
downstream
like tears.

 Written River 2:2,  Winter 2011