[illusion . . .]

 

illusion—not seeing

mirrored in your own eyes

the bamboo lemur,

the amur leopard,

the river of stars

Ribbons 7:3, Fall 2011

King Coal

She is old, though not so old as the mountain.

But the mountain is gone and she remains.

Outside her window at dawn the mockingbird

has forgotten his voice, sings only

the beep and grind of machinery.

She rises early to peer from her window

at the huge uprooted boulder that teeters

high above her house.  Still there—

she must be still alive. She lies back down

to plunge beneath the alien tangles in her brain,

thick as kudzu on the slopes above,

to go deeper and deeper into the farthest forests

of memory, under the layers of brown dust

that turn to sludge in every rain,

past the boarded windows,

the looted houses of her neighbors.

Her ruined mind is free to wander the lost coves

in search of goldenseal and ginseng,

though she finds the healing herbs

have strangely lost their power.  She climbs

through hickory, maple, sassafras and cherry,

toward the graveyard she can visit now

without an appointment or a hard hat,

without that coal-company fellow dogging along behind.

She pauses to gaze over the lines of hills, blue beyond

blue.  The clarity of light pierces deep inside her mind,

stirs up two words she’s often heard

but cannot grasp—demented and overburden.

Mountain and forest, poplars aching

toward distant sky, the song of the wood thrush

melting down the bones, stone and oak and doe

and the shimmering mayfly’s wing—

all this—they call it “overburden.”

She calls it home.

And that other word, “demented”—

that’s what they say is wrong

with her, yet she’s not the one

who turned the world all topsy-turvy,

fertile Earth buried under barren rock,

veins choked and valleys filled with rubble

crushed from the mountain’s ruptured heart.

But the knots and tangles of her brain

won’t hold to recent memory. She steps

between thick branches, out of shadow

into a sunlit, silent glade where—yes—

the mourning cloaks still gather,

more abundant now than ever,

and rise in gyres dark against the sky.

Written River  2:2, winter 2011

[at dawn . . .]

at dawn

over the meadow

a great blue heron

enfolds

an origami Earth

Ribbons 6:4, Winter 2010

[polishing . . .]

 

polishing

old silver

I find the past

tarnishing

my hands

Ribbons 7:4, winter 2011/2012

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

[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)

   

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