The Trees Are Dead

A double-trunk tree stood

two grown into one

two in an infinitesimal

dance of mirth, their join

a slowly twisting caress

An arc of light

a blade in flight

wooden strokes

woodman strains

The trees are dead

against the snow

black cuts on white

winged creatures

as mysterious and ominous

as snow angels fey children carve

The trees are dead...

cold so still it binds

the day an arrow to the chest

snow so sere it blinds

the darkest night hangs nigh

A wooden echo escapes

something fell

as strange as spring...

the double-trunk tree

iron sunk to the core

The Little Girl and the Tortoise

There was an old tortoise named John
maybe 100
maybe more
maybe less
It's hard to say

John was much travelled
maybe Saipan
maybe the furthest side of the world
maybe not
It's hard to say

For all of his travelling
John wasn't a mover
he mostly just sat
that's why he was lonesome plus
His home was a closet

John wasn't aggressive
he didn't like to fight
he was good-natured, polite:
he couldn't run away, that's why
His hard shell

John wasn't good looking, not handsome:
skin dark wrinkly,
stubby tail, nostrils like eggs,
slippery tongue (for examining things)
Thin not very long

John didn't eat all that much:
he liked squash,
both summer and winter,
roses too, but his favorite was
Aleo vero, succulent and sweet

John's story seems sad
just growing older and older
as others passed on
all except for
Sarah who visited one day

Childhood songs

Childhood songs

I came into the world
  before there were words
  before there were shoelaces
  before dry ice

Childhood sang songs
  reciting, memorizing, gaining mastery
  kittens, toy boats, chicka-dee-dee calls 
  don't touch dry ice

Songs I once knew, I would hear them again
  arithmetic was easy
  I think further now
  but forget

What once seemed simple
  the difference between plus and minus:
  really doesn't matter
  getting dressed was good exercise for later

School had disadvantages
  one can learn something for life anyplace
  streams become rivers that run to the sea
  mermaids riding dolphins sing under the stars

Grains of sand in the hour glass
  accumulate below what once formed above
  time is a lesson:
  missed, premature, correct
 
My father said don't touch dry ice

A likeness

His great pleasure was a broom,
batting it
he stood on kitten-sturdy-stubby hind legs

He was Dickon after
the familiar who fired Mother Rigby's pipe:
("Dickon...a coal for my pipe!")
his orange coat the impetus.

He came into this world
a playful soul  
fifteen years ago
April last

He came into this world
a random soul
his mother half-feral, a tortoiseshell stray

He came into this world
to sleep in baskets (clothes),
to loll in the sun:
one time he caught a bat


It's fall now,
will Dickon another April have

Once we were of like age
now he's more,
older

Each morning he's
like all elderly and frail
who wake to the dawn

For Dickon
morning's brightening's
an eclipse:
Dickon who used to
find wonderful fun in all things

Can motion be home

Can motion be home?

The answer is no!

I am not one whit wishful

of roaming, of flying.

Travel is exile.

It is here that I roam,

that I saunter:

mountain, Valley, and shore,

la Sainte Terre.

Not Bon Voyage but here:

where sunrise is

a welcome:

things growing large,

things that are concrete.

Sunrise speaks to dreams:

of things to come,

of sun-filled pine hills,

of light-drenched ponds,

of belonging some place,

without which it's dark.

Fog on the mountain

Are they unimportant?
The foggy days in life?
I do not know...
but wish I did.

Dante spoke of fog ambrosial
Why?
I do not know.

I know river fog
morning fog
winter fog
frost-fog cutting the face:
I know fog dimming my eyes,
fog both above and below the mountain:
All as strangely uncanny as uncanny can be.

I've not seen fog on little cat feet:
the fog that I know
it swirls and it twirls,
cosmic sensibility.

Fog can take the mountain's place,
can recompose the Valley and more.

Fog's oxygen breathable,
yet shifts rocks and trees, suggesting
find a new direction,
another completeness:
a unique, solitary perspective,
another mindful view.

Kettles of Raptors

What's that you say:
kettles of raptors?
oh, an image poetic:
that means it's to be believed

A faint roll of thunder
in a cloudless sky, the Valley's weather
caught between mountains, North and South,
always changing

A thousand feet up, raptors:
ospreys, eagles, red tails, harriers
leisurely circling,
tracing patterns in air

They rise on the thermals
in stiff-winged spirals, gaining height
then down and out to gain distance,
another current then down and forward again

A migration pattern:
raptors indifferently together,
for all the world looking like
leaves in a kettle

The thermals a natural magic:
carrying birds
up and down:
wings seldom moving, rarely a flap

The kettle's hypnotic,
powerfully liberating to view:
how would it be to fly on wings tireless,
some unimagined new land discovered and claimed

Some things don't exist without words,
can't exist without utterance:
a kettle of raptors
is one

To hear of a kettle of raptors
is not the same
as to see it,
yet it's the words that give meaning

Words express thinking:
ours and that of others:
but not without ambiguity,
uncertainty,
hesitation

Words express recognition:
a certain conviction,
an emotional assurance:
when we speak,
we express what we think

The question of course:
are we thinking enough