Solstice

Oncoming rain.
Overhead a
Herd of clouds sails
From sunset and
Tree frogs sound
Like castanets.
West creek curve
Echoes a chance bit
Of blue between billows.
Something in me knows
Echoes and chance.
It sways me, I move.
Madam Earth, I believe
We have a dance.

 

Travertine Revisited

When my longtime friend, Willie, read this poem 8 years ago, he wrote a comment that was a poem in itself and joined the one I wrote: "Why does this remind me of some of your... poems from some 40 years ago? Perhaps it's that focusing down through layers and layers of existence to what turns out to be the pebble."

Layers and layers of limestone sediment and time is pretty much what travertine is. But there's more. There's light and life and ages snagged in this mineral that is also a recording mechanism. You take old limestone and polish it right in a rockgrinder and you get snapshots of old forests --and, in imagination, scenes of prehistoric life. My favorite bit of travertine got doodled again last year and recently used in another blog. Here is the rock (upper left), with its real scene of million year-old tree trunks in it, and my doodle of imagined dancers below.

Here is the poem:

Travertine

Eyes of creatures long gone
And what they saw are
Caught under crystal
From solution--
Light of other days compressed
Into stone, deposited
Here and there--
Their tongues lapping
At the surface of waters
Long since turned
To desert.
Here, amid red,
Green, yellow are
Black veins in
Travertine that tell
Of seas, rivers, lakes
Come and gone,
Prairies carbonized.
There is much to read
In a pebble. 

 

 

Back Porch Poem

Grampa's pistola,
A watch --gold-- a
Rule of folding brass,
A netting shuttle I
Watched, when I was
Little,  get whittled
From shingle under
A shady tree sees me.
Grandma's scissors parked
In Portuguese cork,
A box of pins,
This is how settlement
Begins: someone
Builds a shadow,
A shadowbox, and under
Glass each soul looks
Out, out of the past,
And in reflection
Sees outlines of
Things to be --like
Us, like you and me.

Back Page

Rain!

Cosmos stooped
Over stone today.
Raindrops ran their
Rail into shadow.
Nothing is really alone.
All our roots are there.
Where raindrops go,
Stems lean, life shares.

North Gate

This wall away --things
Forgot-- is not well-laid.
A weightless thought
Alone can shift stone,
And this jumble of
Memory will lift and
Tumble out to me.

Four Words In Search Of Punctuation

One looks
Into it

It looks 
Into one

Transit umbra, lux permanet

Shadow passes, light remains.
What follows --bodies, brains,
Lives, worlds-- contains what
Unfurls in quotient: energies
Sent in rhythm from the sun.
To be or not to be -- or two
Bees on a sunflower-- this
Unmeasured hour matters not 
To me, but when I see this photo, 
Taken by my wife, I see what 
Sun and shadow made 
Of life: "...pretty sunflower
waves hello." --her caption.
I for one must laud the
Light that made it so.

New Light

From 93 million miles
Above, a little light
Touches a newly
Hatched dove, gently
Across that huge divide,
Greets an autoelic spark
Inside life --I believe
That is love. 

We Are

We are born into
Unknown works,
Forms of things to be,
Grown in futurity--
What will be done--
Souls circling a
Yellow sun, a 
Living star. I rather
Like what we are.
 

Mockingbird

He showed up on a 
Sunday (I remember my
Portuguese, Sunday=Domingo)
And began to sing.
He sings of doves in lower 
Terraces and bushtits in hedges.
He sings of hawks in high
Distance and a lazy cat --he makes
All their sounds, announcing to all
Birds this is a good garden to nest in.
He is a virtuoso --his opera includes
Survival-- and the birds come.
There is nothing medicinal in
His art of reciting himself
But he helps other birds decide,
And he makes me feel good.
I call him Placebo Domingo.
"Bravo", I tell him. "Bravo!"

Norma's Scarecrow

Because of bunnies
And squirrels, she
Built a scarecrow
Today and draped
It purple in wind
To send out royal
Edicts snagging sticks.
They flutter, they defend!

Then Wings

We come from piscine
Astronauts with a desire
To explore atmospheres
More rarified --equate
Progress with higher
And higher flight.
There are times though,
Admittedly, when
I miss my flippers.

Squirrel, Stealing?

She sent a photo from the
Fenceline, captioned,
"Squirrel stealing almonds."
A leap to judgement.
I know this squirrel.
60 years ago my brother
Told me a story about 
A squirrel named Benny.
I fell asleep, but ever after,
I called all squirrels that.
Benny's mother lives in our
Woody End and eats plums.
Benny needs protein.
Almonds are expensive in
Stores but free on our tree.
He has no money and
That's all right with me.
 

The Dove Itself

Third space up the staff,
A single note, word or chord
That is life --a dove recites itself,
All it need say-- and peace
Sounds to me like a panpipe
C, but there's something more,
Something added to the score
That is the dove itself.
 

No Mystery?

No sneering dowager.
No randy gardener.
No butler who
Never does it.
I did not
Make the rain!
No old diseased
Colonels creeping
Round in the sun.
No mystery:
A leak and
Caulking gun
Suspended between
Heaven and earth.
No mystery, me.

Moments

Here, you,
Me --we seek
Causality-- composed
In antiquity
And antiparticles
Shot from the
End of time, events
We climb and close.
Some things
Are impossible
To find on purpose.
Others, equally
Marvelous, find us.

McClures Beach

Overhanging ferns
Barely quiver.
The little stream
Meandering down
To the beach
Is composed
Of inland storms.

Rain Shadow

Under rain shadow,
Across coastal cordillera
To high plains and
Mountain axis
Of this immense land,
Come raindrops that
Stop gently in our hands. 

An Infinitive: To Find

The lemniscate in love
Is silent, isn't even
Written, but it's there--
A vowel or infinite
Avowal, promise beyond
The mind-- left free
For lovers to find.

Some Assembly Required

Remember,  we work hard
On who we are and take
Care in what we do.
You can't be part of 
The universe without
It being part of you.

Propogation

We see force bend
Empty space
Where things end
And will be,
Have been and
See mass succumb
To entropy.
This is what we
Often miss:
Insubstantial stuff,
Future floating over
Dandelion fluff,
Ideas where nothing
Stops --nor do lives
Grow only to
Their tops but course
Above what we are.
A sob or kiss, enlarged
By love,  gains force
And travels very far.

Insulators

Tinted glass poured into
Contour of cables
Carried over roads,
Cities, over rarities,
Familiarity, daily
Schemes and dreams alike
Connect now only to
Day and night --refracting
Sunlight and in age
Still  glow  bright.

The King's Mansion

The message board claims a mystery, somewhere between Ohio and Kentucky,  crisis within caused a campaign to fail. I have often wondered what misfortune befell this ministry.

What we know
From a train window,
Uncertain, caught
In a murky curtain,
Consumed in
Remoteness, a
Process by which
Probability changes
Under stress--
Progress reversing--
Once occurred,
Never happened.
Another blessing in
Disguise: kings 'til
Proven otherwise.

Here Is A Wave

Here is a wave 
Rolling off itself
Forward where
Stars swarm around
Each other and
Slide back into 
The sea, where 
I am astonishment
Aware of itself, me.

She Photos

She photos frost
On table tops and
Days stunned in
Frozen sunshine --

A reaction different
From  mine, very.
I go  indoors  and
Draw a cherry from
Memory, but  still
She lives with me.