Gifts

Going out to my car,
the air is relaxed for
a November evening.

Running late, and
still enough time
to gaze at the moon.

written November 2021

Meeting

my mind is a garden
wander yourself in it friend
bring some of your mind flowers
see if they would grow
and if you would like
take a plant or two
with you for your travels
perhaps we’ll meet again

written July 2024

Unfounded Worry

the prayer came back:
this cold blue thing
is not to be dissolved 
instead     accommodated
and then when inevitably disturbed
that thing     (now anticipated)
is not an unnecessary call
to action     but
something to accept     yes:
we’ll let it play in the corner
till it’s done

written August 2024

A Thread

We don’t gather
in evenings with instruments
or stories so maybe
art and music and writing
their media, is a connection
(among this isolation)
to others, a thread
of meaning, shared.

written June 2022

Between Dense Cloud Cover and Moist Earth

Jung wrote that
life is not a string
of facts of external events
but is instead
made of story composed of myth

on a day when
the gray is a tone
that all the form all the color
seem to all speak

the chrysanthemum such a yellow
such a yellow as if illumined
by its own light

written October 2022

Sparrow Speak

I hear squeaks with round
edges

and energetic inflection
she

chirps into the sunny afternoon
there

must be meaning in this
pattern

of sound received by
other

sparrows otherwise it’s
pure

art or pure
joy

or all in one the
song

projected into afternoon
sunlight

written summer 2014

Coffee Stir

the way I hold spoon
to a coffee stir     this
hold spoon is the hold spoon
of Grandma’s when she
would hold spoon to a coffee stir
it just seems the same
all these years later

written May 2024

We Have Doves, They Are Called Mourning

*

She sits on the flat rock
in front of the light
that shines on the fountain.
This is where they sat.

*

The day before, the woman
found feathers strewn in the yard.
She assumed it was the result
of a hawk feeding. Her best guess:
the feathers were of a mourning dove.

*

And now in the gathering dusk
the dove sits alone on a rock
near the flowing water.
She honors her name.
She gives her presence 
to one’s absence.

written May 2023

Forest Walk

all the doing
to get here

     is undone
     by being here

written July 2024

Something of Me

bird (beyond my sight) you sing
in lush tones I know not
your form / your name you find
something of me among
wood & brick bringing
your outside through glass
like the forest is
floating here in my mind

written May 2024

Summer’s Beginning

The balcony bathed in sun.
I sit out on it alone, reading
a poet who was tempered by solitude.
I drink in the sunlight.
Thunderstorms forecast for the next week.
The boards hot on my feet,
I slip inside, cool & dark,
the book still warm
in my hands.

written June 2023

a small pumpkin

a small pumpkin
nestled in snow
with a white snow cap

written December 2017

My Guitar Holds the Sky

In the gloss
of its handsome
brown varnished wood
shows
the sun-draped dual window
and the blue of sky beyond.

written May 2024

Illumining

I watch bugs and moths
batter around above the lot
beneath the light illumining the lot
and think of earlier, feeling alone
enough not to go out on the balcony
but still going out onto the balcony,
and come inside, still thinking,
now of 115-year-old poems
and how emotions are not unique
to any of us, and I drink from
a glass of tap water that is
purified water from a lake.

written summer 2014

They Wander

They wander out from my memory 
somewhere in California.

I first found them,
these pairs of pants,
in a store in New England.
They were bold:
a velvety blue pair
and a green one too.

I tried and they fit me,
and the price was good.

I didn’t put them back on after that.
Neatly folded in a flat box
they made it into the compact car
going to California.

I remember taking them out
in our room in San Diego
and holding them,
their colors and softness,
this representation of part of me
that felt bold & expressive,
and then placing them back in the box.
After that, the box falls out of memory.

But what that box held
is still somehow with me
as I sit here in faded blue jeans
on a cool spring day
with a dream of song.

written May 2023

Autumn Morning

The sun breaks through the east
and enters my home. The light is
crisp and bare. It stretches
all the way to the back of the kitchen.
I stand at the slider
and look out at the dewy morn.
I’m drinking my coffee. Soon
I’ll say some prayers,
the ones that come to me.

written October 2023

The Trees in the Cemetery

The trees in the cemetery 
burn with the color of autumn.
They grow spindly and bare at their tops.
The leaves above Dad’s grave
are still green. How old this grief?
18 years. Walking away
I see Dad walking from 
his father’s grave
in tears.

composed in October 2023

Recently the Moon

Recently the moon was visible from my balcony — a rarity! Tonight, I stepped out, into November’s cold air, and thought to see if it were there again:

looking for the moon
I found a couple stars

written November 2021

walking under a pine tree

walking under a pine tree
the falling snow
                          pauses

written March 2022

A Small White Moth

I saw a small
white moth like
a tuft of fluffy snow
amidst the summer day
that seemed to struggle
with flight. It labored
upward, then, like a
kerchief on a string,
fluttering and falling,
was drawn down to the soil
beneath a bush. May it
find a good place to rest,
I thought, thinking
it had come to the end of its life.
                                                   Then
later that day I saw
a tuft of white, a moth
I took to be the same, in strength
and in flight, perhaps
earlier what I saw
had been the beginning.

summer 2014