Libra's Way

                                       Swingset chains ring

                                       like tiny bells in the storm.
                                       They attempt to flee each other as 
                                       winter crosses the freezing black lake.

                                       In the steel gray space 

                                       we twist and shake the sand
                                       that lashes our shoes together,
                                       blasts our long cold rows of tracks and
                                       all the words we ever made.

                                       Water stays near the water.

                                       It thrashes and writhes
                                       against its own wet time, strains
                                       repeatedly to become one with
                                       the land and the cold-born clouds
                                       now burning.

                                       We carry winter solace

                                       to that cold shore,
                                       to the high blown sand
                                       and snow that shoves us down
                                       like clumsy metal dancers,
                                       like spinning drunks who think
                                       they can do anything
                                       in their own young tilted way.

                                       Now mercy, we know,

                                       is the roots of tall beach grass,
                                       the strength of cottonwoods,
                                       the hard black locust tree full
                                       of long black thorns made
                                       to resist all erosions that
                                       shiver and drift us closed
                                       across our own white blinding.

                                       Still, silver water stretches hard

                                       to enter our land, howls softly
                                       as she crawls up the broad
                                       flat gleaming beach to join us.
                                       She offers smooth glass fingers
                                       from her icy wet hands
                                       each time she comes 
                                       but never takes her eyes away
                                       as she soaks back down
                                       the wet gleaming shore.
                                             

                                       You can tell she dreams

                                       of young mothers and friends,
                                       of children and sleep, of climbing
                                       out of her scratchy wet portrait
                                       and all its icy frame to enter a tall
                                       handsome coast vast and gray,
                                       of being with wild grasses who tug
                                       at the snow and lean close together
                                       in family clumps to hear
                                       the beating of roots and
                                       gull's wings and winters
                                       passing by.

 

 

                                  Tracker

                                  In this borrowed field

                                  I cannot

                                  find the edges

                                  of the sky,

                                  or my vision,

                                  or my own heat.
 

                                  I cannot discover

                                  where to go

                                  permanently

                                  from here.

    
                                  Covered in light snow,

                                  the soft white sky

                                  feels strangely

                                  closed and warm. It

                                  coaxes me to

                                  remain here

                                  for at least

                                  one more night.

                                 The silence implies

                                 that I should make

                                 no future mention

                                 of music, or wonder

                                 where the owl flies,

                                 or shatter the brittle

                                 new ice that forms

                                 low in the furrows.

                                
                                 I will ponder 

                                 only the snow

                                 that pretends to fall

                                 gently around

                                 revealing everything.



 

Welcome In

This home smells hard, like bread and trees,

its hallways painted dry leaf brown, with

dandelion strains and gently colored stems.

When sun slants down to meet us, we find

nighttime spiders' strands dangled down.  

No blue rain will fall for now.

                              God will not fix these things--autumn’s

noisy hinges, dragonflies who visit us

                              in morning, translucent curtains that reach

                              for the pond.  Ragweed continues to grow

on the sides of our slanting walls.  Each day

                              our feet find new soft places in the rotting floor

                              to settle in more deeply.  The gleeful dog

                              remains far back to sniff the pee

of recent animals, make tracks in

sunlight collected in pools, in

foot piles of small shadows and soft fallen

pine needles, calm and brown.

                              They tell him everything.  We have lived

                              far too long without anything, without 

good silence, without 

compassion toward the clear 

black pond who trembles
                              in her subtle glass skin,
                              sleeps contentedly, waits for
                              another chance to yawn indiscreetly,

not out of boredom, but in hope

that we might all learn to breathe.   

                                          

                               To Sleep

                               A blinking jet plane

                               distant with fuel

                               and hunger

                               takes off low

                               to the bitter ground

                               A nearby fluster

                               of  small wet sparrows 

                               feather-beats its way

                               through a covey of long  

                               whispers drawn thin with a  

                               sudden escape from

                               fake dangers in the yews

                               A scrawny dark river unfurls

                               her swollen arms, flows

                               her whole night's blood long

                               and sparkling, curls

                               beneath the humming

                               breast and heaven’s newest

                               strain 

                               Crickets and stars harp
                               well into the darkness,
                               harp deeply through the silence,

                               harp on and on about the gravel

                               distance of roads long ago while

                               soft underbellies of young

                               white clouds draw silently near

                               looking for new milk

 

                               Now the lilacs of summer

                               droop with ripe aromas;

                               iridescent hummingbirds,

                               green and dark, plump themselves

                               full of small-blossomed secrets

                               too noiseless and small for us to know 

                               Clean summer sheets

                               that once gathered us close

                               in their soft linen flames

                               now cover us with sleep, sleep

                               in our own silences, our own bitter skies,

                               our own familiar ceilings full of blank
                               bright stars who never look back

                               at their own burning

                                         

                                           Winter Table

              

                                            I see your hands

                                            at rest, still

                                            present at the table,

                                            present in all the worlds

                                            we have shared.

                                            I see

              

                                            your fingers now,

                                            relaxed and slow moving,

                                            sculpting dry bread crumbs

                                            into soft deft rows along  

                                            wood grains of the table,

                                            tracing ancient circles

                                            in the dark-stained wood

                                            which many hopes have failed                   

                                            

                                            to notice up to now.  How

                                            stubborn is the soup ring

                                            that clings to the sides

                                            of each dry bowl, each

                                            story told about warm houses

                                            and acorns planted and

                                            new rivers in our dreams

                                            that keep us watered and  

                                            alive, only

                                            to be washed away again

                                            and again with all the silent

                                            signs.  This time,   

                                            may the hands we fold

                                            rest together
 

                                            in the broken stories, in

                                            the many places we have been, in the

                                            music of snowfall,

                                            the milky new silence

                                            of communion.  

                                 


                                 Make Me

                                 I miss the water lilies

                                 who float in the marsh,

                                 blossom in the sun,

                                 close themselves off each night

                                 to everything.

                                 I miss the bark of sentry trees,

                                 the roughness, the armor, the beautiful

                                 silence they make

                                 when we dissolve.

                                 I will never understand the glee

                                 of dogs who roll in the stench of death—

                                 is it to absorb the facts?  the obvious

                                 short victory over obeisance?  Or is it

                                 just a bad-smelling story they tell

                                 for all living things to hear?

                                 Here I fly, well, perhaps not with the birds

                                 or the bugs or the machines,

                                 but into my own terrestrial mind

                                 where I try to notice everything—

                                 the jewels, the harmony, the wild trees

                                 who frolic even on an unseen wind.  

                                 So who am I

                                 to argue with clouds

                                 who stand much taller, wider, grander,

                                 made mostly of the same wet stuff,

                                 who float for the sake of floating,

                                 stare for the sake of staring

                                 just like me?         

                            


                            Woman at the Well

                            After that last exchange, beauty

                            slipped from my grinning,

                            slipped from my strong right hand,

                            slipped from cold gray clouds

                            the way hard-colored rain slips into

                            deeply pondered ground.  Even then we

                            could clearly see that only certain trees

                            are made to ooze with roots and mercy.

                            A cowering cloud

                            (once loomed above the ocean)

                            now bends her sweet lungs low

                            now hums into fleshy ears

                            now rolls beneath our fancy shoes

                            and pelts our flimsy preacher faces

                            with the salty exhalation

                            of an entire ocean's blather.

                            Before all of this, a beautiful acorn

                            (now forgotten) tottered and spun

                            on a shallow surge of foam,

                            blinked and bubbled toward

                            the great black shore, then rolled back

                            with hapless ease until the next wave came

                            to erase all trails and visions

                            of where it once began to

                            drown in its own flame.

                            We should have held a little longer

                            to those intermittent waves

                            the opportunities for silence

                            the rhythms we found.  We should have

                            kept them in a clear glass jar

                            within the city's open gates

                            until our own pale hands could unfold like windows

                            to show the secrets we had made, secrets

                            that keep us pointed toward

                            the water I have always known

                            and will always carry.

                             Pieces of 3 a.m.
                                   
                                    Slip steel enters unwelcome,

                             wet cold, grumbling dusk-gray,
                             ridiculous.  Apple blossoms
                             hang ready to open and fall
                             again.
                        
                             Here we are, hungry and dull,
                             impatient for light, impatient
                             for violet blue, dark ocean blue,
                             baby powder blue, gold crimson fertile blue,
                             long horizon blue. 

                             Our own birth blue
                             will not give way
                             even to this cold, even
                             to this unscented candle glow
                             which is not ours to give.
                            
                             We wander unsteadily
                             in the spaces we are given
                               unmindful,

                             unable to fathom the silence
                             of lush river grass, fields of waving
                             stones, shared subtle breathing
                             that mourns the loss
                             of days too wet to ponder
                             love or sleep or wounds.