Cribbed Logs

A defining fire:
Carbon remains;
A curriculum derived
From a test of lives,
Escape velocities,
And tusks dropping
To the ground.
After which
An absent sound,
Silence of
Startled birds,
Replaces words.

Closed Geometry

[photo, son David: St. Malo, France]

A sloping downland over
Cliffs where morning
Mist veiled distance--
Sound and dreams
Reforming gray
Watery light served
Our needs as we
Woke, confused,
Emerged from night
Amnestic and saw
Light thread
Dawn to the
Hill we stood on.

Chainsaw

Winter warmth is
Exculpation enough
For me to take down
This poor tree,
Buck its dead wood,
Free the light
Of other years
Inside its rings.
There's some good
In the warmth it
Brings, and no blame.
All life is combustion,
All one flame.

Grandparents

I sat in my chair.
You sat in your chair.
Time passed.
We sat there,
Children climbed onto
Our laps then slid
Under the table as
Children do.
Emerged grown,
Involved, capable.
You look at me
And I at you.
We done?
No, another one
And one again.
They keep getting in!

Holographic Equation

Why not extend
In all directions?
Leaves rattle in a nut tree,
And if a shadow winks only
Once, one could deduce
Autumn, know all things
Hide in yellow
Light where late
Summer slipped out a
Weedy gate.
Fall will heal something
No one noticed injured,
Something heat can't kill.
Dreams endure and will
Always slide like a
Ouija planchette across
Seasons, not led but
Followed by reason.

Garden Table

Here, worries pass,
Regret resigns,
Heavy years lift.

I raise my glass
And all its shines
And shadows shift.

Flying With

[with thoughts of L. J. E., b.Jl. 29, 1910, d.Nov.7, 1960]

 Wind ends nowhere, 

Erodes sand, yardang,

Clay,  roof, 

Web, hair and lifts 

The matted woof of 

Forest floor away.

Cyclic, like night

And day, causes 

Clouds to spread, 

Spins storms to 

Shred on hills, crags, 

Drags seed onto new 

Meadows and, under

Spill and spell, leaves 

A distillate

Of rainbows (ends nowhere),

Begins in mystery.

Between, it 

Tests eternity.

Yosemite Simile

Gullies dammed on
Ice-falls raged
And bubbled.
These were troubled
Times, and cold--
Chipping footholds where
Streams overflowed
And froze into
Unforgiving glass.
A dozen times we
Lost our footing
On the pass and
Slid grasping what
Grew through --a
Foolish hike,
Winter too.

Greensward Sunrise

Impossibilities seen
Ahead of dawn
On a raw day:
An elegant ghost
Trailing across
Lawn toward
A wagon on
Slow gray wheels.
Geese untuck their heads,
Silent, not scared.
These are not spectres
Of the dead but
Dreams hauled away,
Cleared for children
Waking, children who
Will shortly wake
And come to play.

Hope Tried As An Adult

Garden party, sunlit--
Praying mantis, lurking
Under walnut leaves,
Swivels its head--
Glass and silver rattle
Under voices.
A time to receive.
A time of choices.
Sea fog glides in,
Golden monkeys clinging
To its clouds
Chattering, upset.
I set down my drink.
My dear, it's time
To leave, I think.

Ukiah

Pulsar in a
Cabbage butterfly,
White wings flashing.

Victory Garden

Anger wrapped in
Breezes, time
Entangles: a scarf
Snagged in nettles,
If I lift it, tears.

If I leave it,
Deny a need--
Silk cloth, a
Weed-- I am
Uneasy yet free

To leave, not
Forget, leave
And regret a
Scarf only--
Not icon or flag

In hope unfurled--
And anger.
I retreat into
A larger world.

Romance Of Modern Horology

As they are
I've had senses
A long time.
Got used to them.

Some lights dim.
Others, at others'
Expenses, flare.
I know time, my

Name; planet, under its
Flame, explores
Eons by season, as do
I, within reason.

On Dogs And Humans

Night, miles, motors,
Machines, dogs smile
And trot unseen.

We can't help but travel,
Slip from gate to
Gravel, levers, rotor,
Chains, cars, a wheezing bus.

Machines change us,
Train us.
Dogs dream.
We dream

Between fever and cogs.
Shadows pant in the park--
Gargoyle grins.

We know our way in the
Dark --we are human, yes,
But what then?
What then?

Gardening Summer Fog

(at station 351073)

Not a lighthouse really
But beacon on stilts
Standing at shallows

Between silted water
Of the wash and
Deeps of receding sea.

What climbs its
Black iron ladder,
Studies enamelled dials,

Is me --in
Thought and augury.
But what is this,

This mist in bloom
Where tide has
Percolated low?

I really can't say.
Is it you? Hello!
Happy birthday!

Among Sunflowers

Among sunflowers I am
Small as a cat, an
Animal that deforms
In stalks and stems;
Its brain, instincts,
Things portable
In wilderness.
I become no more,
No less, an animal
Equipped only to see
What confronts me,
Yet I believe the
Soul is not invisible.
It rolls and weaves,
Reveals itself in
All action, of which
This moment, garden
And I compose
The merest fraction.

ветреный день

A giant--
Invisible--
Thrashes in the
Trees, and grasses
Start to hiss.
I have a
Russian hat with
Hanging lappets
That I wear on
Days like this.

Spring Wind

Off they went
One by one
Into their lives,
Then grass
Grew through
The gravel of
Our drive.

Pencil Stub

Gardenscape on
Paper: inexact
Science, scribbles.
You know, it
Won't do.
That's a faucet,
Which should be
Central --I
Love you too.
And that, is
That the
Right size?
Things need
To be how big
They are.
If cartographers
Invented clocks
Each would have
NOT TO SCALE
On its face.
Solar system?
No, it's where
Tomatoes go.

Apricot Orchard

Bare feet slap
Packed earth.
In my mind a
Child plays in
Summer shade.
I am here, far
Along the life
He made --more
Than memory, he
Exists in me,
Brown boy whose
Birth began what
I am: an old
Genie who flew
Into dreams and
Made them true.

Inflorescence

Down this lane
Naved in alders
I pass gardens:
Menorah in
Corymb; umbel,
Decision a moment
From the stem;
Racemose, rhythm--
This lane, a
Thing thinking
In things, while
I think in
Thoughts of things
But mostly listen.

Dream Garden

Windows snibbed, gate
Thwarted --so we,
Hand-in-hand like
Two children, walked
Along a boundary wall

To a corner
Screened by beech.
Was there a way out,
A breach behind?
Are we trapped inside
Our minds?

A western wall,
Wasn't it?
So long ago.
All I remember,
All I know is
We never looked
Behind that tree
And you still
Hold hands
With me.

Late March

Midnight,
Tented tulip
Petals prove the
Path of
Earth.

Sprout

Time, at any
Point, is sum
Of everything
Looking into
An infant's face,
New, soft, surprised,
Composed of all

Time, all one--
History done
In little looking
Into me--
Eye to eye,
Inquisitive, seeing
And seen.
How much

Time, eons
Caught between?
A clock chimes one
Where past and
Future focus.
One goes on and on.
Hello baby!
We are more
Than a local
Phenomenon.

Still On Spring Break 1971

Left college to
Pursue a superior
Course of study.
What I learned,
Raising children,
Has bettered me.
I am nuts now,
But better.

Genie's Curriculum

Can omniscience know
Effects of its own absence?
Sense, sequence, me
You, monsters, fools
Assemble so,
Learn from what
They know and more
From what they do not.
We form
Around our thoughts
From light,
Motion, slime.
At the rate our
Spirits climb
We'll know nothing
About nothing
In no time, and
Grow brains in
Primordial rain.

February Rain

Wind-drawn storm
Dragged ragged and
Red west, trees
Stripped to
Tendrils, rest in
Sudden stillness.
Stars, other suns,
Appear where sky
Clears over other
Gardens, other worlds,
As ours will dawn
To this --a house
Of mirrors, an idea
And all ideas.
You only know where
Your inside is
In cosmos, here.
In there, in calm,
Is a light and
Reflection all
Lives share.

Celtic Moonwalk

(regarding a feature of western Mare Crisium noted by John O'Neill, 1953)



I'll meet you on
O'Neill's Bridge,
Yes, on the moon,
Three days 'til noon--
A glistening ridge
Where lunar rock
Replaced failing
Timber --at noon,
Remember.

F=MxA*

We see force
In a fallen staircase,
In empty space.
We see force
Where things end,
What they did,
Closing note of an
operatic skid.
We see tragedy
Or escape or mass
Succumbed to entropy,
Events slowed, locked.
What we miss:
Insubstantial stuff
Floating over shock,
Salsify, dandelion fluff,
Ideas where drama
Stops --nor do lives
Grow only to
Their tops-- launch
Above what we do.
A sob or kiss, enlarged
By love, assumes force.
In time we see this too.

_________________
*force=mass x acceleration, Newton's 2nd law of motion.

Pruning In January

Wind upending dust.
Grass flat under time past,
Time future, us --souls at
The back fence freed, petals
From probability.
I would rather be
That -- rose mounded
On itself, frenzied--
Than pruned into
Ornament, wondering
In bone meal and bullshit
Where freedom went.

Pondscaping

Horsetail, parrotfeather,
Papyrus, angles, directions
Pinioned under algae, clouds,
Summer stars.
Where we are:
Compass seeks north or
Closest bars in an
Iron cage, but this is
An age of dreams.
A compass dreamed
Seeks a dreamed north,
A course imagined
Where thought gathers
Before dawn, our
Best bearing --
A path to take.
Where dream and reality
Coincide, we wake.

Time Wave

Where form fills this
Pull of potential,
Here, rain falls.
Rain falls on what
Will be because
Rain fell.

Life, shrunken nearly
To nothing, soaks, sprouts,
Stretches, ages.
Old bark ridges,
Cuts of other seasons,
Things in soil and reason
Endure

Between bricks,
Snails fossilized,
Ideas gone dead.
Worms, bees, moles,
Treefrogs clutched
In a broken cup

Don't care what time
It is here and
To a gardener being
A year --or a million--
Arrears is about
Like caught up.

Time Again

We can arrange approximations
Into things that work.
You're another.
Exactness is what remains
After tolerance falls to zero,
Which can't be done exactly.
Barometer bottoms out,
The valley breathes again.
In checked logs lizards,
Dreamless, forget everything.