Generations

[Brian photo: House On The Rock, Wis.]


We are made of
Force fallen from
Stars, its course
Laid through darkness,
Swells, tunnels
Out to carousels.
We worked, played,
Remained hopeful--
Lenses trained across
Time, focused farther
And farther on--
That starlight lives,
Receives, gives
And thrives in
Cosmic dawn.

The Aerodynamics Of Rapture

[Norma photo: same doves again, with mother]


Life is a moment
To moment proposition.
Even infant doves
Look lived-in by and by.
Rapture is, for me,
Deferred by imperfection,
But doves, doves
Can fly! I walk
In late spring heat.
Shoes, feeling rather
Full of feet, are
Left on lawn.
I have not gone,
Ascended, only forgotten.
Watch the doves,
And could you bring
My shoes in?

Losing Self-Evidence

[Norma Photo]

There is a geometry
To everything we see,
Which --if we solve for
Angles and drift--
Slides, shifts, dissolves,
Is lost to eucalyptus,
Roofs, orchards and
Sunny yellow fields
Before we wake in what
Our calculations yield.

The Aerodynamics Of Mothers

[Norma photo:infant doves]

Red-tailed hawk cleaves
A cyclone of swallows,
Climbs, reading the
Ripples of her shadow.
Bushtits snap in thickets.
Mocker recites its
Catalogue of crows, cats,
Crickets, for all who need
Know and, below in ivy,
A gray dove sits
For her photograph.
Fear though, when the
Camera nears, sends her
Clear of the nest
To land nearby.
"Here am I," she
Says silently.
"Leave them, chase me."

Portable Parabolic

[Norma photo]



Not so much memory
Or destination or
Station stagnant
In a poem --what
Is home but finding
Our place in
The journey?
Moved among moving
Stars, a trajectory,
We become.