Roofcat

Roof-mounted
Mechanism presides
Over red dusk in a
Garden under eyes
That close, open,
Close and one
Feels silent wheels
Within wheels.

Winter Lens

Winter lens, lifted
From its tub, uncovers
What we set it out
There for --thirst
In migration, lone
Outdoor foragers
Crawling flat on
Frozen earth, cats--
A tub between birth
And rebirth of seasons,
A good tub for 
All these reasons.
 

Eden Called And Recalled

Displaced pines seek
Far mountains,
Cone by cone--
Contrive to climb
Once more from
This valley floor-- as
Statice pushes
Purple ribbons
To the sea.
A daisyring,
Remembered in a bee,
Evokes a dance
Above its hive.

By chance and such

Devices we survive.

It's what we do, yes,

I'll dance with you.

She Says

She says,
"Families are grown
like gardens."
She is right.
One seeks siblings
Scattered across
Divides of time,
Land and sea.
Days supply possibility,
What seeds are.
This garden
Grows around a star,
And I am  more, under light,
Real in a way
I had not
Been before.
She is right.

Keep This Coupon

At the window
Overlooking lawn
You have your
Mandarin collar on
And remark,
"It's a journey
You know."
We walk together
Through a house
Empty except
For a cold tea kettle
In the kitchen.
Whatever else
I seem to see
In this dream,
I shall always
Love the way
Dust looks
On copper.

Sea And Semantron

I haven't traveled to
A silent island, or found
Sound frozen in unrung
Bells, but feel the sort
Of roaring order quells,
Quiets into footprints
In the sand and watch
As care and fear
Run out of land.

Forest Geometry

I have taken down this sad dead tree

And defined what it means

To me --warmth in my sixty-fourth winter

And decidedly more: center formed

Along a line moving amid time and trees;

Light to open night and set itself free.

Rock Point 3 a.m.

 [Davidphoto of Geo. Doodle]

An electric path--
To be what one was
At trailhead in
Night-sea crossing--
Under the moon
Between black crashes,
Incandescent corridor
Of not-to-be and west
Away from memory.
Something takes flight,
Swift, silver.
Rest of me turns east
And out of night.

Peace Circle

        [Maya Lin's Peace Chapel, Huntingdon, Pa.]

Each hour of peace improves us
Under hours of peace ahead.
By whatever device we are led
To peace of mind, peace enclosed
In stone, left behind where each,
Alone, may go and cast a  shadow,
Wave hello on a street or hilltop,
We meet the hours of peace to be
And know they will not stop.

Autumn

A roar radiates over me.
The leaves sound like the sea.
Wind begins where galaxies
Stir, revolve, emit time
In which events dissolve and,
On days like these, twist the
Topmost branches of our trees.

Discretion

 

The cloud around
A rattling kettle lid
Is inattention.
Not all I know
Concerns me,
But I must mind
The burner, adjust,
Learn order,
Depute some trust
To hands and heart,
Feel liberty
And think of thought
As art.

Detached Vine

A light trellis snapped
In a bit of twisting wind--
Once something happens
Its shape is held, and
Held also by what did
Not happen and doesn't end.
What remains is not
Misshapen, but surplus,
As all events, all
Directions include us.

Bug Eye Glasses

They hold light in too.
Each rainbow unattended is
Begun and ended anew
In her brain, by
Seamless maths
And what remains is
A garden where
Spectra were.
On this path, one becomes
A gardener to
Work beside her.

Morning Glory

Morning came.
Care returns--

We make our way

Unfolding--

We wake.

Amnestic night, into

Shadows receding,

Beading in early hours

Under light, one light

Over thought,

Unfurling flowers.

One learns

Of all life needing

A single flame.

Three Bees

Sea-green pattypan
Over a tumbled wall.
It's an old yard,
That's all.
If I have made,
Among things growing,
Any discovery,
It is not owing to
Clever recovery, ecocosm,
But to three bees

In a blossom, their
Aerial dance, selection and,
On close inspection,
Two patient ants.

Time-Traveling Petunias

Creation of tropism, choices 
And rare rejoicing voices in
Light, tolerated a
Certain term in 
Thermal eddies, violate entropy.
Virtual, anomalous, even
Petunias appear astonished
Here from points past--
Real, suddenly somehow
Like us, here and now. 

Temporal Geometry

Bare feet
Slap packed earth
Bald in dry
August grass.
Effect is cumulative.
Or just youth up
A levy at thirty degrees
Until older, then
Twenty or ten
And grass grows again.

Historians

Spots, stripes,
Astragals tell us.
Wings, antennae
Tell us.
Each compound eye--
Each butterfly
A four-page history
Of butterflies--
Tells us.
Do we understand?

Trellising Old Planets

 

Something quite big
Delivers, sends itself
This way --a moonlit
Twig shivers in wind.
An old cold clod
On eliptic course
Lends its force to
The tug of tide.
We do not hide but,
Here and there, love,
Work, care.
We do not resist.
We solve the frenzy
That lets us exist.

 

What Doors Are For

Do we worship the sky through
A hole in the roof or step
Outside in search of proof?
Or find doors to walk past--
A beginning orchestra class
Of squeals and drumbeats,
Screams, bleats of instruments
Being slaughtered, from which
Will come music someday--
Under roiling winds that
Play over a new language
Escaped at doors and swirled
Under clouds in a new world.

Til Tuned

Formal hedges are
Only Uniform to a
Degree.
Between edges
Are floral lives,
Tropism, thought and
Space solved in
Deformity.
Where care
Includes conformity
It is vaguely disturbing
To be anyone.

Crossing Herbaceous Borders

In our sixties now
And I am much amazed.
In other days we imagined
What could climb our trellis
Of time, what would open
Under light that had
Not touched us yet, how far into
Eden we might get, might
Return in love to look
For a lost glove, find
Dropped shears --it could
Take many years.

Field Survey

In the south field are
Thrush, meadowlark,
Killdeer and dove.
My ears hear them:
Quail, sparrow, crow,
Mockingbird and me.
The mind can see the
Form in sounds and
Find itself waiting
To be found, in dense
Riparian, clouds, but
Where, how far?
The question --ah!
There we are.

Hats And Macaroons

On such things,
The lens one is
Scans a manifold
Universe and all of
Time for light to
Focus and find.
On such things,
Assembled in mind,
Refracting all lenses
And light one is,
The impossible--
In all senses-- is
Left behind.

Rainbow, Dusk

Projected
Onto thunder
From a prism under
Receding storm, a
Refraction of eternity.
How distant can we
Be, you and I, when
There are such things
In the sky?

Friends, Friends

Doors close--
Soft echoes under
Stars, undisturbed--
Cars pull away
From the curb--
By evening's end.
Early spring:
Lamplit earrings,
Friends, friends.

In Our Stove

              [Norma photo]

A log can burn,
Release years
Of gathered sunlight
From its rings.
We also burn,
Metabolize the
Ageless light
Of things--
Far fires,
Stars unknown--
And to the
Light of stars
Return our own.

Clearing

I have cleared a path
Through thickets thwarted
At an overlying log, a
Trail in our woods that
Otherwise guided a child
Around and under one
Wonder to another --
To see, to ask the impossible
Of me, which I would
Answer, of course, incorrectly.
So much laughter and
After so much work
And play, a child tows
A wagon away.

Early Rose

Let what leads
Song and feathers into
Warming wind draw
Winter to a close.
Let all lament
And cold-kept grief
Recede and fade and give
Place to the rose.

Grace Cathedral, Nob Hill Poem

Who keeps the keys?
Who sweeps lint over
Labyrinth, sill, steps,
And down the windy hill?
Who presumes
To launch it away,
Shake it from a broom
Above the bay?
A few hopes snagged
On each other,
Around which a ghost grows,
All dust and web --binding
Him, her, hers, his.
Who knows how haunted
This universe is?

Horsewish

     I'd like to have a
     Patchwork horse
     I could ride under
     Arbors of dreams.
     Through floral arch
     Sleep and thoughtwork pergolas,
     I would ride my ridiculous horse. 

     I would follow a
     Ribbon of glowing
     Motes along galactic
     Dawn, ascend over avalanched
     Days --embers under its course.

     Over clouds composed
     Of begins and of ends where
     All events assemble, we
     Would fly; my horse and I could
     Canter on cosmic winds.

     Eternally journied,
     Ever arrived, and
     Always about to
     Begin are too diverse for
     The logic of earth but
     I'd like to have such a horse.

Afflatus

Its center calm,
A whirlwind moves
Over me.
A memory of
An old embrace,
I walk with it
A little.