Where The Future Is

(Norma photos)
I will tell you
Where the future is.
I step beyond my
Shadow on the green
Back door to
Where she put a
Hat on him

And grandmothered dreams
Into memories.
The future roams our
Work in short steps
Under boughs and birds,
Seeing all, startled
At wind-eddies, awed
At assemblies of
Ants and daffodils.
I am paid in pebbles.

Children

[Norma photos]
Little people put
The planets up
On a line of wooden
Beads long ago along
The yard to arrive at
A shield of shells and
Shards --to face the sun,
Glow while time revolves
And solves itself
In long shadows.

Who knows what
Elementals leave
Their hollow hills to
Repaint routings done
So long ago?
Children-them,
Children-us belong
To the garden
And grow.

Sundial 2, Future Horology

[Astronauts service Hubble Space Telescope from shuttle Atlantis, May,2009. Credit: NASA]

An ant crawling up
An analemma gnomon
Knows what time it is.
It is his, his space.
A dial measures only
Its face and numbers
Trace astrometries.
Mean time encumbers
Bigger beings with
Trouble seeing what an
Ant already sees.
He sees what's there.
He watches --and
Watches need repair.

Penny Farthing

[Norma photo]

Light is energy.
It has no identity
Until it runs life.
After which it
Continues amid
Stars, defined
By its speed,

Pausing only in
Gardens --yours,
Ours or some
Planet-- where
There is need.

In this slow
Combustion of all
Life, light is
Everyone fueling
A single seed.

Special Winter Day

[Norma photo of Norma sculpture from the '60s]
Peace, an ember
In here on a cold
Christmas and I
Can use a poker
To knock a blaze
Out of it but then,
By and by, must
Bring up fresh fuel--
Yule log? I think
Not-- too heavy,
Real, not so light
As I feel this day.
So on my way to
The barn I follow
Footfalls calculated
To offer an old dream.
What is, what seems:
I know imagination
And reality coexist
And each is never
Without the other
But I forget which.
I take the wagon over
An emblem marked
A long time ago,
Replenish the hearth.
That's all I know.

Rewiring An Old Starship

[Norma, candid photo]
From ninety-three
Million miles, a flame
Opens roses --tiny, yellow,
Unnoticed -- composes
Us between what is,
What seems and
Leaves a little light
In our dreams.

Philosophical Instruments

[Back porch Norma photo]

Lenses, table-top pots
Stop instants.
Senses trimmed in retorts
Decant, tease
An essence out of light,
A cosmos out of night.
You'd think a
Mind that spans
All time would
Not change suddenly,
Impose what
Could be upon what
Was but sometimes that's
All it does.