Something happened back when I wasn’t
looking, or maybe I was looking and didn’t care.
Maybe it happens to everyone by a certain age,
or it doesn’t matter. Or it’s what is meant
by equanimity and it’s something to strive for
only I didn’t, or at least I don’t think I did,
and yet, maybe it’s the fruit of all that prayer,
the hours on the front step with my cup,
watching the sun come up, or set.
~Solstice 2017
‘QASIDA
November. I drove through the woods alone.
The chapel had not changed—yellow stone,
pine benches, carven altar, the wide, worn
boards of the floor, pale ceilings adorned
with stenciled flowers. I watched the sun
mark the walls with pattern as it shone
through the western window, low.
Once this was a shelter from the storm
around us. Once, with you, I won
what my heart desired. But you are gone.
On the forest paths, in shadow, once we roamed,
no need for touch or speech. Some
nights we sang by the lake while moon-
light and starlight from heaven’s dome
brushed us with silver. My voice, a golden horn,
blessed the stones with song. Oh, none
but I can praise our music well, or write this poem!
Free and wise and fair were we, born
between the mountains and the sea, who turned
the wild wood into home.
The Qasida is an elaborate form. This is a feeble attempt.
A NAME
. . . Surprise is a name of God.
~Brother David Steindl-Rast
Who else would bring a pair of owls
to circle my head on New Year’s night?
Or a fox to the front step
just at sunset yesterday? Who
could have handed us a little child
with round cheeks, his mother’s mouth,
his daddy’s smiling eyes?
In the gray and icy drizzle of winter,
who else would have sent a foot of snow,
north wind to slice through our dismay?
Or gathered us together
and crowned us with roses,
taught us how to sing?
LEAVES
The tree is dropping her leaves to save
herself for winter. She has nothing
to do with me. What’s the point in saving
things? The trees don’t.
Everything they need now
is underground. I will not be defined by
souvenirs. Between the pages of books
I no longer read, old leaves crumble to brown.
Memory is sepia.
Turn the leaves to ground.
NOVEMBER 10, 2016
Don’t forget the river:
it takes whatever it can carry,
drops what it can not.
Look up at the crows
who transform
stale bread and roadkill
into charmeuse feathers
and obsidian eyes.
Think of the willows.
Whenever they break,
they grow anew.
Remember the sunset,
the last vivid glow in the west,
yellow light under purple cloud
gilding the last of the leaves
on the east side of the garden.
Don’t forsake the moon
shimmering into sight above the pines.
She’s nearly full tonight.
Let all that she will become
fill you with longing for the dawn.
A few years old.
ORDINARY BIRDS
Go early, our friends told us,
just before sunrise, when the light
above the mountains is a pink line
that slowly turns yellow, then gold,
and the sun sends up a long pale pillar.
Then the geese will rise, calling,
against the sky.
You can hear the whisper of their wings.
We went to see the geese,
early, Orion and the waning sickle moon
still in the deep blue sky. We heard
very far away, the geese muttering
in a low wet place, waiting for dawn.
The sky turned pink, and the sun
sent up its shaft of light, and the gray
clouds thickened and the light
shut down. We stood in the shelter
against the south wind. The geese
we came to see did not rise.
Overhead in the rafters, little birds
were waking: a grackle, house sparrows,
one young brown cowbird. They shook
themselves, preened their feathers,
murmured their unthrilling music–
ordinary birds, plain birds,
in the gray morning,
waking one by one.
published in Penwood Review, Fall, 2008
I wrote this back when I was picking apples at my neighbor’s orchard.
THE YEAR THE APPLES FELL
That was the year the apples fell into my bag
no matter what I did.
I would bump up against a limb
and they’d shake loose,
roll down my brown-sweatered arm,
glance off my shoulder
and into the turquoise canvas.
The bag filled, and filled.
The year before–most years–
those loosened apples hit the ground
and I left them to wasps, mice,
possums, the foraging deer.
Some of those years–the one
my sister died, or the one my folks left
the old house for the condo and we salvaged
perennials from my mother’s garden
and tried not to cry–it seemed
all the apples were wasted like that,
every last one. But this year,
for a change, something different.
I stood under each tree looking up,
bemused, as one by one the globules fell
red and ready, like blessings,
like easy autumn dreams.
Nov. 21, 2002
Published in Connecticut River Review, July/August 2004
