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

Target Practice

for Tony

Think rifle
think bull's-eye
that's the subject here

The rifle:
the most physically compatible,
precise, advance since bow and arrow

The bull's-eye's nature:
line-of-sight, dead center black,
20 metres to 50

Add ear guards:
a silent world,
all to itself

Breathing stops,
thoughts vanish,
a gentle pull on the trigger

All that there is
involuntary,
a microscopic tremble of arm and hand

Is it Zen,
is it mental,
or more, perhaps other?

The mind's eye touch of target,
chaos free:
an ordinary day

At the waterline

Fundy's cobblestone shore:
granite, quartz, basalt
ground handsize
is smooth and pure

Years by the thousands, millenniums sure,
the bay's eroded jasper, garnet, porphyry
sandstone, feldspar and crystal
the rarer, the more true

Fundy's shore:
a rockhound's tumbler
the salvagers' delight
be it pot warp, driftwood or shell

The prize though
is beach glass
nothing aluminum, plastic or similarly obscene but
beach glass sublime

Beach glass can be red, yellow or blue:
amethyst, amber, and turquoise are rarer:
the gems though are apple to deep green
and the lapis of that sometime  medicine cabinet staple
Phillips' Milk of Magnesia

Gardens

Flowers are a wonder
the garden a delight:
that means the planting
and transplanting,
the weeding and the pruning:
all Epicurian pursuits,
Lucretian counterweights.

Gardening is an art:
a four-dimensional endeavor:
length
breadth
depth
and time.

Gardening is Darwinian warfare:
gardens are at odds with nature:
not the fittest but the select survive.

The garden is an ecosystem:
one intentionally designed:
a faux habitat:
one that should not be:
it has no innate survivability:
no natural resiliency.

Though gardens have their cycles:
without the gardener they would not be.

Prodigies

Prodigies

A peaceful summer evening, mild and clear
ripple clean lake water reflects
a silver still moon, bone bare,
on the shore, black pines and seldom silent popples,
dark cottages, almost shapeless small boats, humps indicative of cars

The children, my grandchildren, sleep
for them sweet dreams come easily,
no tossing, no turning
they are young, bothers fade

I stand outside, paying respects to the visit's first day

It is a day not mine, not really
it went faster than planned
the mark of a visit

I anticipated the visit
now that it's here
I find it most gone

For them, the grandchildren, it lasts
a bit longer, maybe even more

For me time flies
each year seems a moment

For them, the young, an hour's
time enough for most everything, a week
without end

I hear the hoot of an owl
a coyote, coy dog really, barks on the hill
something goes splash

I know time's passing
but tomorrow and tomorrow will come
and the visit will simply/merely have been

Everything passes
What my grandfather's grandfather and
his even before
knew privy
has long turned to ash
even their memories are now long forgot
they are gone and their children's children gone with the wind

When I was a youngster
Europe's wars weren't history
Hitler and Tojo really were there
their armies and navies, what are they now?

I anticipated this visit
now that it's here
I find it most over

It's not my time
It's the children's, the grandchildren
Prodigies