Life With Horace

poetry & essays

Monthly Archives: May 2016

gift of sudden light


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gift of sudden light

morning brings the flowering world
to wait outside my door again
its gift complete
an honest bounty within reach

I glance away, and in
that moment sun arms
leap above the mountain ridge
to cast breath stealing light

and startle me to unexpected joy
when happiness, no simple thing
arriving first was present
and most certainly enough

light’s twin is thought
conjoined with time
its tipping point
arrived at step by step

the pilgrim mind walks on
until the heart is open
and able to receive
the sudden glimpse of truth


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Haiku for a friend with notes

see each forward step
my own not for another
true gift of friendship

 

 

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The way forward for a friend sometimes seems clear to me, but not for them. The hard thing is to step back, find the wisdom to make changes in my own life, and let them work it out. They already know that I care.

Horace, black on black


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Haiku for tuesday with notes

accepting the muse
black head warms my foot again
reaching for note book

 

 

 

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Horace likes to sit under the kitchen table when I write, with his head across my foot. I had planned to write later in the day today, but clearly my muse thought otherwise.

the green veil


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the green veil

a scrim of green now masks the woods
and blankets its recycling brown
and fading winter tale

with upstart life rolled out
to mountain slopes
I know are there

another green veil lives
across the timegone paths
that memories illuminate

backlighting those
just out of reach
until we call them close

a flash of thought
to pierce opaque divides
and fill the mind’s eye arms

then hold them quiet and at peace
sweet moderation’s gift
remembering

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A poem for 5/8, mother’s day. The photo was actually taken much later in summer, when I was shooting the morning mist that comes off my garage roof after the sun comes over the mountain arm, and a series of remarkable night-built spider’s webs in the trees (one is faintly visible on the right).


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countdown

there is movement
in the daily flow of green
to full on spring
as bud fists loosen grips
or fern nubs thrust up clumpy heads
and hillsides morph to verdigris

reminding me of childhood nights
spent time-stretched
jumping tick to tock
wrapped in wild impatient
longing for the morning
and its gifts to come

in truth the journey
through that wait
or days lived blossomless
are weighted to the same degree
because this moment’s beauty is
the only certainty we have

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a shortling for 5/5. spring has been excruciatingly slow this year for us. yet even as we creep along, just knowing the apple tree will blossom, or the lilacs bloom, is such a gift.

beauty of white against dark green


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litany

what don’t I remember?
my collier brother brain
hoards words and time
with colors joining hands
to sing their song

I don’t remember
any moment spent
without a color wash
intensity of thought

I don’t remember
understanding those who hate
preferring to destroy
instead of build

I don’t remember
living days or nights
without a music counterpoint
embers into torches lighting memory

I don’t remember
sunsets painted on the undersides
of clouds or nature come to flower
without feeling joy almost to tears

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A leftover prompt, from Day 29. Things remembered, and what they weren’t.