Expanding Herbaceous Borders

Around this moment,
An idea in a brain, container
Seeking a shape contained,
Have I been more,
More than petals, fur, clouds
In an inland herd?
Have I been a bird?
Or more, in this thing
Thinking things, have
I ever flown before, me?
Among hills, seas,
Voices yet to be,
Have I soared over night,
Unlit rocks, snow-caps --a
Thing flying deaf from
Time's collapse upon
A path of lightning?
Maybe periwinkle or
Something blue beside
The gate, will do.

Mind And Poem

In lives, all poems live
Twice, and upon this
Fellowship presume a course
In memory, even
To immobility.
Even still, stopped
Still under still
Lateen sail like a
Caravel locked in ice,
The poem lives twice;
May sink or ruin in
Mind but is never,
Never left behind.

In Norma's Garden

Mutual induction,
Recycler's lattice,
Leads to middles
And edges, things
And thought --a
Recombinant garden--
Mingled ends
And starts.
Magic is
A function of
Character and
Character,
Magical art.

Away Mission

[Norma photo]
Outside our garden,
Along a reservoir
And rail easment,
Toward thistles
And wattles, sights
Underwhelming
Win over
Wakefulness as
Our steps turn
Toward home.

In Praise Of Feral Women

[Norma photo]
To know you
Is under childhood,
Beyond caducity.
Old man, young man
I variously am,
And you, the
Excluded middle,
And timeless divide
Are a siren inferred--
A forming glow
At peace, wild--
Ahead of mere thought.
This I learn, an
Eternal child.
This, you taught:
Peace is wild
Dismissing only
What it is not.

Magician's Garden

You study
Spring gusts
Across a wand and
Hold it to the breeze.
I am pleased to
Wonder, am I old
And forgetting
Each sphere reflects
The greater sphere
Of the sky?
You are the
Magician,
Not I.

Why The Butte Crumbles

Earth rotates
Because, if you
Leave one end of
Anything up,
It wears out.
So does the
Other end.