my woods are hung
with lamp lit moonlight
shallow beaver wash
turned into opal pools
picked out by
beams that launched
diffused through
vapor rings we know
are ice but touch
us softly
__________________________
Day 22. We have just had a full moon, fitting for the week of Earth Day.
The catalog arrived today
injecting green into my thoughts
lush garden dreams now underway
Vast lettuce rows not puny pots
rich hills of beans with tongues of fire
espaliered trees of downy apricots
Splashed color stokes my fierce desire
until the bubble pops and I fall back to earth
my garden plot is small, the barrow needs a tire
A reset needed for this year’s rebirth
___________________________________________
NaPoWriMo Day 5: the prompt was exotic seed names, using one in a poem. I had a yen to dabble once again with rhyme and a bit of humor, and chose the terza rima: aba bcb cdc d.
Outside an open window
long bones of morning light
stretch across new green
and under petal floats
Mind’s eye leaping past
advancing spring
to waiting brown woods
Snowdrops hang, quiet white
broken only by the calls of jays
or arcing cardinal voice
I ache for home
those starker hills
and life lived on a wilder scale
With the flow of my brook’s
ambient song in counterpoint
to raven growls and beaver slaps
The shouting silence of the stars
that touch my trees
Small-hours communion with the moon
cupped softly by the dark
My homeward journey’s pull is strong
yet it will be hard to leave
a house so filled with love
and people of my bones,
Twin pole stars
anchoring the heart
outside my door the guard has changed
a day of wet and gloomy gray
whisked off by racing clouds
abdicated winter steps in minuet retreat
the sullen blue gray glow of rained on slate
is caught by short lived slants of morning sun
and wind, a small all-hands treetop voice
is loath to roar (for now)
the dripping cloak that wraps this house
begins to dry and shed small gleams
the morning raven fly by
lacking winter urgency
green daffy blades push up
brash in return, migrating from the soil
no longer threatened accidents
almost time to prune and clear a way
for the celadon and smell of spring
_________________________________________
I’m mindful that March in New Hampshire is fickle, and for a good long while snow will be a possibility. the path to spring is never straight up here.
morning light in eyes
beams peek past the window edge
a friend has returned
__________________________________
this morning the sun returned from its winter sojourn away from my window, continuing the slow dance from solstice to equinox, right to left. shining across the bed and into my eyes. a welcome thing in the pit of winter.
the apple tree has given up its leaves
sightlines to the treescape skyline
of the mountain ridge are visible again
skeleton beauty skirting stripped down
lilac oak and beech, embracing stolid
pine arms, needles feathering
this morning’s straggler sun
a wedge of brown and gray and light
this small world peaceful
waiting for the snow
__________________________
this is one of those mornings when the contrast between the world outside my kitchen window and places of violence and sorrow is very stark. I am grateful for this peace, even as I mourn another shattered night and pray for France.
another zooming bird
yawping canny xenophobic
dipping wings eager
voyager flying unfettered
gliding the heather
sky in random
joyous quoits kitelike
over lambent ponds
nimble marvel
____________________________
for Day 10 of NaPoWriMo 2015: an alphabetic poem using words starting with the 26 letters of the alphabet. instead of going straight through the letters start at the ends and meet in the middle by the finish.
my flower beds are throwing off
their compressed dimpled white,
and there are windy days
with teasing warmth
and vanguard migrant buzzards
chased by crows.
even as I gladly face the sun,
there are some things
to miss a little while
that left me breathless
in the cold, choked with joy
at seeing sudden beauty.
a first glance to the eastern ridge,
and brilliant blue first light
across a clear late winter sky,
blots of flemish clouds
that never come in summer,
scudding low and changing shape,
new snow like moonstone dust
lit by a full moon’s glow,
my other forest,
traceries of crystal frost
inside the windows on our porch,
mimicking the solid shapes
of tree and bush.
oh I am more than ready
for the squelch of mud,
and branches swelled with buds,
soft leaf and frond,
assaults of tender green,
the songs of
snow melt freshet streams.
it will not be a hardship
to accept all this,
no not at all.
I stand alone, counting time
wrapped in the kiss of fog
sensing but not seeing
others of my kind
waiting, shouldered, upright
at the edges of this pasture
I dream in solitude, aching
for the touch of other roots
however faint, to feel
earth’s water flow to
reaching deep dug tendrils
of my kindred in the woods
I dance in secret, moving
with prevailing winds
my branching shape their echo
but in summer dark or autumn mist
the sounds of crickets, calls of flying geese
lend their beat to summon ecstasy
as I sway until the dawn
_____________________________________
The tree in this photo seemed to move in place.
Photograph by Jon Katz, copyright © 2014,
used with permission.
after sun’s descent
with afterglow in slow pursuit
the light outside begins to fade
until one sees all hue has gone
a world soft palleted in gray
before deep purple
and true night
an oddness, this, I think
that with light’s advent or decline
the ordered spectrum has no steady march
but serves the sun and air, its masters
angled to the earth
at day’s beginning
the gears of light move
to reverse extinction
from the night before
black to grape toned whisper
I am coming, yes, believe
and like a drop of color into water
at a point so undefined and quick
the eye and mind are fooled
the gray point fulcrum tips
to show the world in monochrome
until God’s brush begins to paint again
and it is dawn
__________________________________________________
in Miss Entrican’s Fifth Form Biology at Channing we learned the eye sees color only to a certain point of diminishing light, after which everything is gray. decades later I still love to watch for that moment.
Walking under mid-March flying clouds,
snow still layered tightly on this wetland road,
there are soft murmurs, water running under ice,
the flow from unseen melt is fleeing winter.
A half-warm sun and gusting wind of early spring
cannot erase the memory of heat and fecund life,
riches here to be regained at nature’s pace, not mine.
The dogs and I tramp to the dam and back,
and dream of summer pleasures looming large,
imagining the dragonflies.
__________________________________
On yesterday’s wetland walk my mind kept overlaying summer on what I was seeing.
the clustered blues
have come to feed,
loud, gorgeous
wing of seven,
flying in with
unexpected grace,
slight hesitation in
each landing on a limb,
the power of their wings
allowing float.
the vision of
a singleton,
movement caught
up in the tree
but without sense of
pattern, common trait,
while with the whole, it is
nature making dance
to catch the eye.
__________________________________
our feeders draw large clusters of particular birds, along with the ones and twos and threes of others. the grace of the jays in the apple tree caught my eye.
Life With Horace 