Abundance
A Wednesday in Oberlin, a warm, affable, summer day, dolce far niente, under the red umbrella, we’re al fresco at Lorenzo’s pizzeria. Bees feast, elbowing for the finest, pink hibiscus blossoms. Beneath the table, a sparrow begs, hopping to a lively mazurka. My wife objects, but I can’t resist, and toss a piece of crust, exceedingly satisfied as the tiny bird pecks at the edges of lunch. It occasionally glances at me, wary, grateful, greedy. That’s it. There’s nothing more to this inconsequential moment. This abundance is...
Read MoreThe Porch
I was premature. Born yellowish, butterfly kicking forward, already homesick when they snapped the cord. They placed me in the sun to bake beneath the maples on their new porch where I could speak to the trees with cries and hear myself attempt the forest sounds. My first language: shhhhh-ahhh-shhheeee. Wind teaching a child to listen to suburban alienation. Each caterpillar inching on my skin was a friend to gather, greet; each cardinal was a scarlet blur of echoing skylight, calling me back from the harsh kick of a car engine. My ears were tuned to the patter of rain on the porch boards,...
Read MoreAugust Hymn
Let everything remain as it is, the unexpected quiet like the August heat out in the meadow, the sun rubbing the old maples. Look at the black eyed Susans studded by the dirt road drop open as they lose their tight grip. Do not hurry. Nothing about this day asks to be changed, things being just as they are. Come, let us breathe in unison with the cattle in their long stare across the creek on this fine Sunday morning slipping away, this day we cannot hold on to, taking whatever comes like the drifting hawk that rises up in the sky. Kneel down in the tall grass in simple perfection with the...
Read MoreRain
I went out on my porch around nine at night and listened to the trees reciting rain. It had been falling all that afternoon. At some point that I missed, that something-like-that-Zen way of feeling the World overcame me (whatever me is) and the World went its way Without me — Only that sound, Trees, And someone I remember that might have been me Reciting...
Read MoreThe Romantic
On bleary mornings, Eos on my way to work, twenty years, my matins, I passed a coppice, a sloughing of limbs, tall, splendid oaks, condensed diorama forest emerging from haze. I’d envision a doleful wanderer, an abbey ruin, Casper David Friedrich’s bleak, romantic painting. The modern came crashing, suddenly a rude huffing, greasy bulldozer, a hole in the ground, a house, concrete, lumber, vinyl, bramble of wire and pipe, razing my sublime, though the trees seemed glad for the company — too much gloom. Who knows? Kids may play in bits of shade, long summer...
Read MoreMushroom
When I went to prune The limbs, groom the hairy, Disheveled springs, I discovered, High in a crook of the apple tree, A slight, soft armpit hollow, Or the tender back of a knee, A solitary mushroom growing there. What an obscene little phallus, White, erect, exquisite, its round Head a button for a king’s mantle, The stem curved precisely As a girl’s peduncular leg, The underside delicately gilled, A sea creature undulating Along the bottom of the Pacific. How did the spore find This remote place, improbable Shangri-La perched on the Himalayas, Miniature utopia for...
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