Grasshoppers
Heard the rustling grasshoppers Rustling in the grass Hopping in the grass Felt the wind sway through, too To gilded curtains, hanging from the lines Gilded by the sunlight expressed on them White otherwise And rustling While the grasshoppers rustled Hopping— in the grass.
Gardener
My garden is planted well With seeds of doubt in one bed And seeds of hope in the other And they grow and bloom for me Always in their own time Regardless of my expectation
Summer Gatherings
My friends are laughing; smoke is watering their eyes —tears from bonfire-love.
Fireflies
In the night, glowing embers whisper and die; their shadows delayed— caught in the after: floating silver coins on the retinae.
A Summer Evening
let me darling, yes at twilight when moths cluster in oak trees and the moon is swooning kiss you, darling as whiskers of wheat might as willow wisps could or the wind when the day is late and much is stationary let me, darling give you a small gift no greater than a blueberry small and ripe, and sweet and ordinary.
Sonnet for Old Friends
Good Summer, thou and ye: I misséd thee.
Returns hath such joy, such merry greetings,
That bring us to the other's company:
Blesséd be the sun on these new meetings.
Yore, I knew thee, still young and immature;
With thy mirth, renewed my perceptions be;
No longer young, but fey and self-assured;
Indeed, no memory could plunder thee.
What hold the past had over us is done;
No more will our dour indiscretions steal
The time we have today: it's just our love
Come to guide us; there will be no repeal.
Listen, thou, and let thy passions go;
It's Summer now, and we've a new past to sow.The Sun Shines Still
— for Hyperion
Bleached bones of the old crow corpse I wrote for surely still rest unvisited in the gnarled copse where the moss o'ertakes the stones and the cold mist snarls along the nearby rivulet where the ferns are blooming. I have thought about the bleached bones of the old crow all winter, intermittently considering their state and where they may lie. I cannot recall. The sun shines still over the dead and living alike and makes a meal of the land. I watch small birds bustling over the black old railroad ties from the camper window. I watch fat bumblebees sipping on the colours. Above, clouds grow beautiful. On the bare grass, my bare feet feel like the shaded roots of a maple grandfather; when I am so close to the worms I know I am Home. Somewhere in the forest there are some bleached bones from an old crow. Their body I found last autumn walking there in the forest where the ferns now bloom. I imagine the sun smashing into those bones and how beautiful that must feel, to be bones absolutely blistered of anything but bone, resting easy on the moss below the shimmering new leaves and beneath the white bleeding summer sun. Gods, what a vision. The sun shines still as a ubiquitous and omnipotent dire line between the world of the living and the world of the not-living. This great beast picks clean the remnants of everything. I do not know what to call it. My species calls it the sun. I wonder how the dead crow thought of it. How does a shiny-obsessed bird classify something ever shining still? Bleached bones, the quiet wind, a rustling fern, and the bloated moss: What do they call that which makes them, then unmakes them? My species calls it the sun. But my species obsesses with labels. Surely, everything else has a better term of endearment for the Beautiful Menace?
Beautiful ❤️✨️