Contents
The Ancient River
The Arrival of Autumn
An Autumn Dell
The Autumn Prairie Night
Bees
Bison
The Bleak and Wild Desolate Shore
Blue
The Eagle
The Early Reaper
The Earth
East of Guadalajara
Evolving Life
Fog’s Soliloquy
In the Tented Fields Beneath a Wild Sky
Mayfly
Music in Winter
Nautilus
A Nighttime Stroll
Once More into the Void
Orchids
Pastoral Tanka
Peyote
The Prairie in Winter
Ravens
The River to a Trout
Robins
A Rural Autumn
Season’s Chimes
Silence
Spring
Summer Grasslands
Summer’s Shades
Sunset
Three Sea Haiku
Water
Wildfire
Wind
Winter Portrait
The Ancient River
From a ridge, looking to a valley below—
one hazeled and shadowed by the sunrise,
with willows bending in the wind’s soft blow—
is an old river with a hooked oxbow.
Over it, the sun scumbles the cold skies
with her honeyed rays and pale, warming glow—
snuffing the stars, shortening the shadows,
eliciting a wood thrush’s sweet cries,
and thawing grass in the frosty hollow.
Beyond the horizon the river goes.
While ever-winding and wild its way lies:
now eddying in banks of ice and snow;
now coursing across a taiga’s meadows;
now sharpening a granite cliff’s sheer rise;
now beating rapids with its ceaseless blows.
Gone now are night and its fine indigo.
The gold sun illuminates the vale’s skies,
lighting the ancient river as it flows
into a future that nobody knows.
The Arrival of Autumn
At the end of summer when the honey drips from the comb,
when the tall grasses wave in the warm gentle breeze,
and the orchards that lie north of the farmsteader’s home
are rich with apples that hang heavy from trees,
then the shadows begin to lengthen in the southern sun
which sets over a heartland of fields and rolling hills.
And folk feel in their bones that autumn has begun,
a time of black and scarlet leaves, brisker winds, and chills.
It is a time of fog. A time of mists among dells and valleys,
when gourds and pumpkins ripen among the pastures,
and streams flow swift, cold, and clear along the rocky alleys.
Then comes the time for hot tea, woolgathering, and a peaceful book.
Then comes the time when the black cat, its eyes like gold-sparked jewels,
leaps from the wooden fencepost, and, with penetrating look,
pads across the tufted grass, past the penned-up cows and mules,
on to some destination, secret or lazy or otherwise.
The days grow shorter and dimmer,
until the heavens are lit by starry orbs and the lush moonrise,
and all the earth is silvered by their fair shimmer.
An Autumn Dell
When the thick rolling mists of September
billow out among trees with leaves of gold
to lounge at the roots of needled timber,
and the afternoon air’s gilded with cold,
Then comes the hallowed season of autumn.
In this time, frosts rime grasses on a hill
and ice a slow stream’s course in the bottom
of an old, majestic, mountainous dell.
A scarlet cardinal trills in the still air
deep within the mixed broadleaf and pine woods,
and an old croaking crow with feathers bare
checks the soggy stump where she hoards her goods.
Shafts of dusty light pierce the canopy
to a moist forest floor littered with leaves;
this light reflects off the cobwebs’ dew
that beads the webs that ornament the trees.
It is damp, crisp, breezy. Mushrooms abound.
Trees rot and furnish homes for worms and ants.
At dawn, the wet woodland wakes with dim sound,
and fogs seem as mournful as remembrance.
The rain and mists, the careful husbandry,
the bees’ stores of honeyed provender
are set against the coming scarcity.
All’s precious in fall, for an end is near.
The Autumn Prairie Night
Stars shine in the prairie night sky.
The night is clear. There are no clouds.
The cratered moon is full and bright.
Bison huddle in warming crowds.
It is late autumn. Crickets sing.
The northern air smells of winter.
Light wraps the pearl moon in a ring.
Through tall grass, wild horses canter.
Old trees creak in the sighing wind
And drop striped acorns to the ground.
The shallow creek runs through a bend.
A great horned owl soars without sound.
Bees
When spring comes, the huddled bees clamber forth
from their cold, vulnerable colonies,
to feel the parting nip of late winter,
savor the freshness of the vernal breeze,
and stretch their wings after the snowy cloister.
It is a time for scouts to find new hives,
a time for wild, swarming reproduction,
for rearing young bees to replace old lives.
A long-dead tree, standing in a vale’s hollow
with a deep cavity in its gnarled trunk—
a tree surrounded by rich broadleaf forest
that’s populated by boar, elk, and skunk—
makes a worthy home for the nesting bee
whose queen’s needs she must mindfully mark,
whose summer combs will ooze melliferous,
and whose life is forfeit to the hive’s arc.
To make her claim, the bee must make her dance:
a robust and energetic gyration
that tells of her proud stake in the wooded chamber
and coaxes others to its location.
With zealous effort she wins the vote
of the hive’s fascinated queen and drones,
then, in glory, she leads a swarm of thousands,
through pale glens to a queen’s modest throne.
There the settling bees establish their hive.
There is much to do, and no time to wait.
Waxy, hexagonal combs must be built
for the larvae and honey they’ll create.
A resinous mix of saliva and wax—
a natural sealant called “propolis”—
is applied to the cracks and crevices
of the bees’ growing metropolis.
And of course, the virgin must be mated,
for she shall be the mother of all bees:
those to be born in the coming days,
and who’ll be the life of the colony.
Like in a dream, the queen’s mated in flight
(best on warm, sunny days with a blue sky)
by drones who won’t gather pollen, or nurse,
or build, or anything—save mate, and die.
From these singular males, in but one flight,
the newly mated queen keeps in her belly
fertile stores to last the rest of her life,
which consists of eating royal jelly
and the vital task of reproduction:
egg-laying, fertilizing, sex control—
for it’s the queen that manages the lists
of sexes that the working hive enrolls.
Summer comes and goes. The female workers
build, gather, nurse, clean, and make sweet honey.
the male drones laze far from the busy hive
on days that are hot, languid, and sunny.
The world revolves. Trees start to lose leaves.
Autumn’s chill winds come with a rustling sigh.
In fall, the gluttonous, idle male drones
are expelled from the hive and left to die.
The hive’ll be a buzzing sphere of females
when, once more, winter comes with ice and snow,
and at that sphere’s center the queen shall rest,
heated by trembling bees in her hollow.
In fallow days the bees live on their stores,
on honey that to their cells they did bring,
as they shiver throughout the cold winter
and keenly await the coming of spring.
Bison
Spirit-creatures.
Earth walkers.
Living meat.
Golden calves,
Milk-rich mothers,
Surviving snow, heat,
Winds, wolves, disease.
Supple herds
Grow and shrink:
Prairie bones
For buzzards’ beaks.
Snow-mantled
Beneath the moon,
Lonely ravens croak.
Leafless branches
Creak fitfully.
Flurries gust.
Before folk,
Bison herds
Covered the plains
Like a blanket
Of snow
And now
Are a mostly
Forgotten memory
Of long ago.
The Bleak and Wild Desolate Shore
Along the very tip of the Olympic Peninsula—
harbored by sea stacks,
washed by the ablutions of frequent rain,
and scrutinized by the salmon-keen eyes of fierce eagles
who sit perched with feathers made wet and salty by ocean spray—
lies a beach spliced by piney evergreens and the wintry Pacific Ocean.
It wears as its mantle a cloak of becoming fog:
wide filaments of thick mist wreathe the beach’s shoulders,
narrow wisps tuck into the crevices of teeming pine,
and, like a stole, that pale brume softly embraces
the necks of the majesterial, protruding stones.
The beach’s curvaceous, serene form lies upon its side
with its back to the land, knees tucked up against the tide,
with its stone lips ever kissing the briny, icy waves.
Water is its heart. In the rain, in the sea and spume,
throbs the lifeforce that begets the beach’s growth and decay,
shapes its projecting stone fingers, and creates its austere beauty.
In the night, the wan moon with its grey craters
beams down on sword ferns glowing nearly phosphorescent
and flashes on the bottle-gold eyes of great horned owls.
The moon turns milky the evergreen forest that adorns
the beach’s hips, and the moon tints the bleached driftwood
from day’s ivory to an iridescent alabaster of night.
That moon casts upon the beach’s cliffs a lustre
that speaks of shining rock, and, with its hushing silence,
it seems to make the surf’s voice boom.
With wind, the beach’s trees move sinuously and with susurrant song.
In the moonlight, upon the beach’s damp and footless shore,
lie whips of bull kelp, washed up and drying,
with algae blades like Medusa’s chaotic hair, their origins
in the marine forests of stone mantlepieces and rocky shelves.
The crows cackle madly in their rookery, the wind whishes,
surf roars, eagles scream, seals honk and bark and cry,
clouds morph then rework their hues, tides ebb and rise,
marshy mushrooms rise and rot with the sun’s circling,
the fragrance of evergreen sap freshens the air, salmon run,
gulls bed their island colonies with bones, osprey preen and fish,
glossy baneberries bear fruit like murderous scarlet pearls,
and purple mountain saxifrage color the cliffs.
In antiquity, the Makah resided here
using yarrow for childbirth, red cedar for dugout canoes,
yellow cedar for clothing, spermaceti for candles,
stones buffed by water to high polish and wound
by withy willows for anchor stones, having halibut for dinner,
sea otter teeth and whale fins for art, cherry bark for basketry—
which tightens as it dries—and bones for awls and adze handles.
They used tides and stones and fences to catch fish,
laid white clam shells on the tidal floor for better contrast
to see the fish in their traps. On a crisp, windy spring night
six hundred years ago, the tribe gathered on the damp beach
after partaking in a feast of salmon, octopus, and halibut
for a sacred ritual conducted to send its rowers and harpooners offshore
in a twelve-seated canoe to hunt whale. A chief chanted,
sang, worked the crowd into a frenzy before the night fire,
and when the throng felt most animated, the chief
poured whale oil onto the fire, so that it soared, crackling to
a crescendo, rose like the wave of a tsunami, and
in the dark night the bellowing and shrieking
of the Makah were swallowed up by the forest.
Over this desolate beach there is a kind of peacefulness:
gently lapping waves, the soft pattern of rain,
the rustle of a crow’s wings. It appears desolate, Shi Shi,
here in winter.
Blue
Along Malaysia’s white sand lies a cerulean ocean,
blue until the water touches the blue sky.
Endless blue: water speared by luminous scales of fish blue;
shoreline women stating fashion, blue silk against brown skin;
and the wiry blue line on the fishing reel: long-sleeve, thin
white shirt, rod held swaying over water on a cobalt night.
Along beaches, at restaurants, folks hawk blue,
so even the paper lanterns glowing yellow seem sapphire.
Night and day stumble blue, snagged between purple and green,
and the sun moon tides roll between cerulean and steel-grey blue,
their waves flecked with white foam,
and even that white tinged ultramarine.
The Eagle
Gliding wild above a cold, churning sea
that roils, crashes, thunders, and hurls spray
over the gloomy shores and mist-wreathed trees,
is the eagle, taciturn bird of prey.
Over dank sands, on frosty winds it flies—
through icy sheets of foul, sleeting weather
that mantle the beach in a leaden shawl—
into the leafless, witchy trees of fall,
where it roosts awhile to preen its feathers.
Ravens croak, and barred owls soar through the sky.
The eagle coils, leaps, wings through twilight’s pall.
On frigid thermals the bald eagle flies,
wheeling through the squally, wintry weather
watching whitecapped seas with menacing eye,
then bolting, like lightning striking heather—
its grim wings cocked, its bearing primeval,
its aspect awful—toward the cheerless bay.
There the eagle, with savage sorcery,
magics a salmon from the heaving sea.
Through the sleet, the fish is borne away,
wriggling in sharp talons raptorial,
to a high, cold, windswept, bone-filled eyrie.
The Early Reaper
All men are fields of flowers
Which start from heavy seeds.
In spring, their early buds
Will breast the soil and grow.
In summer, their bright petals
Are upturned before the sun.
In fall the plants are wilting,
Their tender shoots are turned to husks,
And come winter they are withered
As the snow and winds sepulcher stalks.
And I am an early reaper
Who comes as a late frost.
In spring the flowers budding
Are the first of flowers lost.
And in summer I am fire
When the rains have left and gone
I spread amongst the meadows
And leave desert in my trail.
In fall I’m like the wild duck
Consuming every crop
In winter I’m resplendent
In robes of ice and lack and want.
The Earth
Our globe has more than mere water and land.
It has more than caps and boots of white snow,
more than a snaking navy cloak of sea,
more than a tawny belt of desert sand,
more than just gusts that the hidden wind blows,
and more than all the grass in a prairie.
For even when fire strips grass from prairie—
blackening the miles of once-golden land,
with ash swept as far as the hot wind blows—
even when spring’s buds are coated in snow,
and even when rich valleys turn to sand,
there is more potential in soil and sea.
There is regeneration. Sky to sea,
grass to ash, bones to dust: the wild prairie,
the austere mountains, and the humble sands
all change and renew as biomes of land.
The process is cold, delicate as snow,
and whirls through seasons just as the wind blows.
What will be from what has come. The old blows
of time, and the future we cannot see
together form renewal: a clean snow
that covers death in the wood and prairie,
leaves reviving water in thirsty land,
and brings tendrils from an infertile sand.
So even from unfruitful waste—the sand—
from pole to pole, so far as the wind blows,
each season breathes new life into the land.
Reefs made of dead oysters grow undersea,
while, on shore, fire revives the prairie,
and tundra is insulated by snow.
Ice ages come and cover Earth in snow.
Then time passes. Frost melts. Lakes become sand.
New species inhabit epic prairies.
And still, time passes. Winnowing winds blow.
Shorelines change, and bays are lost to the sea.
The treeless field becomes a wooded land.
So. Ephemeral are prairie and snow,
like shadows from land, like moisture from sand,
like a wind that blows the spray from the sea.
East of Guadalajara
The still water mirrors the sky.
Pink grasses grow along the road.
The full moon floats like a white eye.
A field hand shifts a heavy load.
A brown colt walks with its mother
And the other cows and horses.
Fields look blue for mezcal lovers–
Agave plants are that blue’s source.
Shocks of hay stand in golden fields.
Ducks swim upon shallow ponds.
The railroad ties zipper through miles
Of wheat, then, with distance, are gone.
Evolving Life
The forest is fragrant with a pine scent.
Orange mushrooms grow beneath a dead log.
Spider webs are strung, gossamer and fine.
Mornings are blanketed by a damp fog.
A butterfly swarm in a woodsy glen
flutters through wan beams of the summer moon.
How strange that each airy monarch began
as a caterpillar in a cocoon!
Transformation defines forest life:
eggs hatch; wood rots; fawns grow; elk die; trees fall.
But the greatest change seems the butterfly’s,
whose stunning metamorphosis enthralls.
What is comparable? A seed to rose?
Swimming, gilled fish to a leaping, lunged frog?
Yes. For, to Nature, each just changes clothes,
as a desert, in time, becomes a bog.
Fog’s Soliloquy
I walk upon the dank, dark moor
And drift from post to post
My feet are wisps on the damp floor
My step is softer than a ghost’s.
My hair’s like tendrils that always waft
My form is a clammy embrace
My figure’s gentle, light, and soft,
I leave no print or trace.
In fancies frightened I make faces
As I wander through the bog
Making eerie, mystique places—
You know me by my name of Fog.
In the Tented Fields Beneath a Wild Sky
Years past, the tented field was one of war
With cloudbursts of bombs and grave, martial light.
Though those times ever, unwelcome, appear
they are not now here, and the field is bright
beneath a northern sky flashing colors
of electric shades in the weird gloaming.
For these tents lie beneath a grand aurora
whose lights, like sailors, are ever roaming.
And what lights! Like nebulas brought near us,
they make a great glow of serpentine greens,
blushing pinks, coronary golds, purples
whose hues before appeared only in dreams.
Such wild and brawling hues that fly by dusk
make, like dread skies of war, mankind feel slight—
but whereas war’s thunderheads bring horror,
Nature’s aurora brings awe and delight.
Mayfly
In the pond, between brown trout and rock dove,
spawns the short-lived mayfly,
who, like brief life and yet briefer love,
exists for a revolution and then must die.
Between the head of the path and its end—
whether it be hard stone or soft dirt,
whether it lies straight or climbs and bends—
in life, in love, there is pain, and there is hurt.
We are mayflies, alive for but a brief time,
inhabitants together of these strange parts;
why, then, should we give our prime
to anything but what is dearest to our hearts?
Music in Winter
In winter, along the grey and green northwestern shore,
the freezing ocean draws its briny waves and bubbling foam
over beach crabs, Nautilus shells, and the crow-combed floor
as the sun sets beyond the sea into her western home.
Then the stars come out. One by one, they start to appear.
They are like lighthouses in the cold, black galaxies of space,
each with a message that says, Here, there are planets here,
circling round and round, far away, revolving round a fiery base.
And then, floating up from the water, comes the crescent moon,
scythe-like, Arabesque, swaddled by scudding silver clouds,
and blinking behind a raven who flies, witchlike, through the woven gloom,
through winds whose warp and weft are the cloth of night’s dark shrouds.
In the midst of this a couple wander onto the sands.
They are lit by moonlight. Her hair is long; their feet are bare.
They walk like lovers and intertwine their hands.
They stop at sea’s edge and breathe the salty air.
It is a dark, cold night. A vagrant cloud covers the moon.
Not a light, not a lamp, not a glow can be seen.
The music of the ocean’s combers is an ancient tune.
The rustling of the firs lends woodwinds to the night’s song,
while the girl adds vocals to the primordial, ancient endeavor,
singing into the wind, into the wilderness, into the wild, high and strong,
a song that lasts a moment, with notes that last forever.
A Nighttime Stroll
While I marvel at the starred, phantom sky—
where silver clouds scud and the pale moon beams
in an epic ether, tinted ink blue—
a weary, worthy town slumbers and dreams
of fortune, of flight, or falling through space.
Where the air smells of pine sap and wood smoke,
fireflies blink, the dirt path leads into trees,
and pondside bullfrogs call mates with hoarse croaks.
When descending the hill through low grasses—
that run to the foot of a hemlock stand,
whose spectral shadows hide the wispy way—
there come a turn and vista of the land.
There lie the distant village and spired church,
the quiet houses, and earthy, quaint lanes
surrounded by arable wheat pastures:
rolling hills topped with rippling grains.
While on a solitary nighttime stroll
through rustling grass and the brisk, biting breeze,
in view of an old, wild, gleaming river,
there comes a worn, welcome feeling of ease.
Nautilus
A good poem, like a good riddle,
May take a long time to unwind,
And in that time we find its pleasure.
The old nautilus shell—spiraling,
Whorled, and iridescent—shows at once
Its bright chambers to light
And hides its cavities in shadow.
Turn the thing, and find its great eye
Watching like a riddle, or a poem,
To see whether its strange bearing can be found.
They are ancient and pearly, these things,
Found on the floors of deep waters:
Hard without, soft within, cryptic and fascinating—
A verse in a nautilus, a nautilus in verse:
The labyrinth at home in its library.
Once More into the Void
The Earth revolves, and seasons change.
Foliage turns red, brown, orange, and black.
Bucks snort. Their breath rises.
Their hooves crunch through fresh snow.
Now the fawns are born.
They are brown, soft as butter, with white spots.
Their legs tremble.
In comes the sun. High overhead,
Its heat leaves the air shimmering.
At the amphitheater, a musician
Mops the sweat from his eyes,
Folds his cloth, and returns it
To his breast pocket. A crowd
Is sitting in the fresh green grass.
He puts the bow to his cello,
Turns to the band, and he calls,
“One more time around!”
Orchids
Near numerous and luminous as stars,
and a sign of things healthy and morbid
(depending on the case and cultivar),
is the almost ubiquitous orchid.
A flower of finely perfumed fragrance,
it is stylish in every quick season:
to be found in buttonholes in romance
and, in mourning, adorning the coffin.
Not even the well-known, august rose
can boast such flexibility and scope
compared with the manifold forms of those
orchids that stand both for grief and for hope.
Pastoral Tanka
In the old hollow
grow mulberries and pumpkins.
White oaks and maples
stipple the pastoral land:
North American haven.
Peyote
Out in the red, white, and orange desert
With dun scrub, the howl of the coyote,
And a falcon’s lost and windswept feather,
Is the green, squat, round cactus: peyote.
To find peyote, you must hunt it,
For it lies hidden and half-buried.
To take peyote, you must cut it:
Shallowly, like a blood bond to marry.
Eat peyote beneath the stars, by fiery sparks,
To the sounds of drums and song,
Wrapped tightly in the cobalt dark,
Balanced upon the venado’s prong.
Drink peyote in herbal or bark tea
With the moon pregnant with yellow light,
While the elf owl shadows moths silently,
And the Mojave rattlesnake waits to bite.
Mix peyote with piloncillo
Boil it with water in a pot on coals
Dream dreams as bright as membrillo
Seek the spirits of the Huichols.
The Prairie in Winter
The cold north wind comes tumbling through
laying drifts high against blackjack trunks.
The deer are out. The sky is blue.
Here lie tracks of hares and chipmunks.
The snow’s buried the prairie grass.
Big buffalo huddle and snort.
Over the plains bald vultures pass.
Winter is long. Its days are short.
The full moon rises behind clouds
whose billowy silver forms gleam.
Skeletal are the blackjack’s boughs
that reach across the frozen stream.
These are the plains in December:
rolling, snowswept fields, a huge sky,
leafless riverbottom timber,
and an arid air, crisp and dry.
Here are wild and austere beauty
found in the mist of bison’s breath,
the crow’s feathers—glossy, sooty—
and the old weave of life and death.
Ravens
Orange pumpkins and golden grains ripen
beneath a horde of black ravens who circle fields
where a straw scarecrow stands with his pipe in
to frighten the birds from their meals.
The sky is not yet blue; it is rosy this dawn.
A tendril of mist twines around the fruitful hollow:
it is a delicate white wreath, soon gone,
that laces the amber-leafed larches and purling river below.
The air is thin and clear–
a person could see to the end of the earth,
and sound carries to a listening ear:
the rasp of ravens, the rook’s burring mirth.
Day comes; the mist creeps into low, dank holes,
then vanishes as the sun paints the rose sky blue,
leaving the moon in the east like a glowing coal
and coloring night’s purples with daylight’s vivid hues.
Flying like a rushing cataract over the still hills,
The ravens light in a dead and leafless oak,
to preen their glossy feathers with their matte bills
and caw and cackle and laugh as if at some joke.
The River to a Trout
What a fine and watery home you are!
with currents rippling, cold and clear,
with a sunken gravelly sandbar
to which eggs will easily adhere.
And what a clean, quick sound you make!
as your water burbles over stones—
water drawn from a cold lake,
one as deep and silent as bleached bones.
River, you branch and fork and cleft
beneath the willows and the oak,
and entwine with mists of gossamer heft
that mantle your surface with smoke.
Robins
Robins perch in the Teton’s forest
on snow-laden boughs of pine trees.
The birds sing sweetly in chorus
while waiting for the north spring breeze.
Their eyes gleam like obsidian.
Their gaze is bright and querying.
With brisk, swift looks the birds peer in–
past the pines on which they’re tarrying,
over the saxifrage and vetch–
to the sky, darkening at dusk.
In the cold low sun, shadows stretch:
full day becomes a hollow husk.
The robins fly to a copse of spruce,
watching for the barred owl and crow.
Here the birds settle in to roost
above wild raspberries and snow.
A Rural Autumn
A hard, biting wind from the north and west
makes the brown, brittle leaves fall and scatter,
as scarecrow-thronged fields mature for harvest,
and bitter, glacial rain starts to patter.
Wild strawberries redden in a small patch,
while black-green gourds and orange pumpkins grow round.
Tended fires smoke near homes with roofs of thatch,
while from the hollow, the sparrow’s song sounds.
Thick and blinding mists blanket moist mornings,
as speckled mushrooms grow in fairy rings.
To these—frigid autumn’s solemn warnings—
the white-haired man lifts his full glass to spring.
Season’s Chimes
It’s inadequate, the sounding chime,
to convey the sundry dawns and dusks
that rise and fall like crops of flowers,
and seasons that stock and sap the bowers,
and fields aging from seed to fruit to husk:
these many great and small cycles of time.
Silence
Silence flies on an owl’s wings
In the space between the breezes.
It follows the time when the skylark sings,
And waits as quietly as water freezes.
Silence sits and stares;
It makes fools seem wise.
Its pacific calm soothes anxious cares,
And it serves as Conscience’s eyes.
Silence waits in outer space
Amongst the beds of birthing stars.
It grants space terror, majesty, and grace,
And befits its stately powers.
Silence separates the words we speak,
And gives honor to the dead.
It defines the meek,
And fills with sound the pages that we’ve read.
Spring
Enlivening winter’s landscapes
(whose snow and icy mists shroud grey tombs,
leave tables bare, and stop rushing rivers),
comes spring with fresh designs drawn with age-old plume.
Spring’s first sketches seem earth-toned and modest:
skeleton drawings of green and brown twigs
among the lowing cattle’s bogged pastures
on whose fenceposts yet hang a holly sprig.
And as early spring’s watery dawns break
over slushy ponds fringed with leafless trees—
the long-held icicles melt drop-by drop,
the soggy soils sprout mushroom colonies,
and the craftsman with claw hammer and nails,
ruddy cheeks, long straight white beard, and clear eyes,
sets from his home to build a grape arbor:
a springtime gift for his beloved wife—
as the sun shines on these longed-for changes
(and others: plum trees with their nascent bloom,
a promise of new fruit, elk waiting to calve
the wondrous life that grows within their wombs),
Spring avails herself of her soft pastels.
Where wild ducks lay their creamy speckled eggs
amongst the tall reeds of moist, muddy marshes,
Spring overpaints winter’s neutral-hued dregs,
and where banks were lately glazed with thin ice—
and morning mist rose from the lake’s surface
as bewitched smoke rises from a mirror—
Spring washes the scene with lilac crocus,
canary yellows, and magnolia pinks.
With different hues on each hair of her brush
Spring lightens and colors sky, land, and beast,
rendering the cold, fallow land warm and lush.
Summer Grasslands
Bison graze the tall, golden grass.
A sparrowhawk rests on an oak.
A herd of wild horses, paints, pass.
Like the sun, they’ve never been broke.
It is summer. The wind is hot.
The river’s just a silty stream.
By it, a fox settles in for thought;
he curls into a ball to dream.
At night the fireflies come out.
The flies twinkle like earthly stars.
Owls hoot. Wolves howl. Trees creak in drought.
Planets can be seen: Venus, Mars.
The wind rustles the big bluestem
and shakes the leaves on the willow.
Silver clouds scud. The moon is dim
and lights the plains with its grey glow.
Summer’s Shades
After spring’s pastels come summer orange.
Like a glaze, lilac hardens to purple,
carnation pink deepens to a rose tinge;
and powder blue turns cobalt, deep and full.
While on branch and twig, birds sing, perch, or cringe –
sweet songs praising, perhaps, shades bright or dull.
In summer the birds soar o’er prairies singed
by a sun that dyes grass like golden wool.
Like through a syringe, bright colors Time pulls,
while the moon, white skull, illumes the night strange.
Sunset
I saw a fine sunset
of bright citrus oranges –
of that a long wire –
and gold, harvest yellows.
I longed to not forget
how the wild color singed
the sky like a fire
when stoked by the bellows.
Three Sea Haiku
Pearl Morning of Mist
Pearl morning of mist
Clipper ships in the harbor:
Undressing lover.
The Harbor Air
Rough, coarse, salty air,
A fragrance smelled from far-off.
Hot stew in kitchens.
Under the Sea
Undersea lie ships,
Sunken and decomposing:
A bottle’s settlings.
Water
The pelting pitter patter of precipitation—
tick tip tip tap
pit pit—
on the rain-washed window
during the dreary day
sends me, wends me,
bores me, as no sun can gather.
Another rain-washed day:
grey and heavy storms,
forms of rain in sheets,
windy wreaths of rain
spin like cyclones in the lane.
The dreary drops go drip drip drip;
the gutter-filling rain
makes slipping hours pass, peculating time
on stealthy phantom feet.
The steady clock goes tick tick tock,
pock pock pick, pick pick pock.
Seconds sound in time to steady drops of rain:
clock pock tick tock.
Seconds sound in tune to rain that nurses earth…
A water song, a sing along:
rivulets of rivers run,
languorous lakes will swell.
A water song with wet world words:
moist monsoon, sea storm squall, great ungainly gales;
sails and masts and levies snap in times of wet travails.
Tap tap tap, tip tip tip.
Ships snapped; sailors dead,
sunk in whirling eddies deep, in whirlpools, fish schools,
entombed in worlds of water,
in a never-dreaming, seaweed-feeding, never-ending, sound unceasing sleep.
Such a sad unnecessary slaughter of superstitious sailors,
of star-crossed seafarers, of unfortunate brave mariners,
in scenes both past and present has never been succeeded nor never yet surpassed.
What a word is water; what a world is water!
Drip drip drip,
tick tick tock.
Clocks chime ten,
the dusky hour,
and still the rain pours down:
days and nights, nights and days,
months and months of rain.
The endless drip, the dreary dusk,
the weary walks from work
in incessant rain on ho-hum days,
rain interminable as an hour.
The Wild Shore
On the wild shore where land meets sea
are stone spires and dank pine trees
and bleached skeletons of whale bone,
white as moonlight or as roiled foam
or as a mist that lies like a wreath.
It is cold here, the cliffs frosty
and hung with icicles, spindly
and daggerlike, while the wind moans
o’er the wild shore.
The stars stretch to eternity,
here where youth feel mortality,
here where we gaze at the vast dome
that makes up our alien home
of ice and flame where land meets sea
o’er the wild shore.
Wildfire
On the yellow and blue prairie
where the wind rustles the tall grass
a fire begins to carry,
taking here and there—growing vast.
The grasslands shimmer with wild heat.
From a distance there is no sound,
just a flat orange line like a sheet
beneath tombstones of black smoke clouds.
In dead of night, it’s an orange glow:
a bright torch in a sunless cave
where glittering, spark-filled winds blow
ash over the charred prairie grave.
As huge, towering clouds roll in,
thunder cracks above the fires;
rain pierces the smothering wind;
lightning appears in cobwebbed wires.
By dawn, the prairie is hell’s floor:
scorched, steaming, smoking, and stripped,
at once damp and hot at its core—
the underworld beneath a crypt.
In time come hordes of butterflies,
undulating capes of monarchs,
faceless with wings like blinking eyes,
fluttering past the torrid marks.
And, too, bison and birds return,
slowly and lightly, hoof and wing,
to that flat dish remade by the burn,
to death, life, known stages of things.
Wind
Born in a cosmic, ancient time unknown—
neither with a beginning nor with end,
roving the globe with no destination,
scaled from gales to zephyrs—exists the wind.
Never truly stilled. Wind wafts through tall grass,
strokes a woodpecker’s pileated back,
eddies, whirls like an Istanbul dervish,
then rushes to autumn’s gold tamarack.
Along a purling stream it courses.
Unconquerable, the wind keeps her head,
dashing over the solemn pine forest,
toward the boreal Arctic’s stone swept shore.
Then out! Out over the cold raging sea,
of black waves, fractured pack ice, and white spume—
out amid lightning’s ribbonlike white wires,
where auroras blaze in electric bloom.
And on! Ever onward, around the earth;
unwearied winds wind through sobs and laughter,
entwine in dirges and warmest mirth,
then are gone again a moment after.
Winter Portrait
On oak branches hang frosted leaves–
brittle, icy, and walnut brown–
among stones, wolves, owls, swans, and geese,
where flakes of snow fall thickly down.
Fragrant pines and gnarled cedars stand
in a gorge by the frozen stream
where fog lies in a milky band,
and the sun makes the clear ice gleam.
Through this cold, all solitary,
walks a man most melancholy.
All he owns is all he carries:
his bread, water, hopes, and follies.
he recalls a girl from his past.
He dreads the long, poor road ahead
for darkness here is most unkind.
He has no place to lay his head.
He treks across the snowy plains
past the scrub oak, the pines, and streams.
His mind is hard, his body pained.
His clothing is worn at the seams.
The moon rises, new and dark.
Stars are woven like fishing nets.
The land lies daunting, grim, and stark.
