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.