Flying to New Jersey
Slap some wings on me And I’ll fly easier, thirty thousand feet Above the ground of dusty shoes. Seen from above, the San Francisco fog Has flattened out and spread across the state. Rivers, peaks and plains Form the features of its airbrushed terrain. Suddenly, green land appears, Sliding underneath a broken coast of fog. I hold my breath and say a prayer. Superstition is reflexive; earnest pleadings Bring a sense of calm as I commend my soul. The pitch of apprehension fades When I notice that the air is stale, the quarters Cramped. Next time, I’ll take the...
Read MoreAutomne Memoires en Provence
He disappeared in the dead of winter… the brooks all frozen and the airports almost deserted… W.H. Auden float across chilly October mornings in St. Remy, singing your friendship out across the fields where last summer’s Lavender and Sunflower blooms chased the sun from horizon to horizon. Like Gypsy singers they sing their bright sadness into stillness coaxing leaves to desert their holy attachment to another season on the branches of Van Gogh’s delicate Olive trees and Avignon’s white Sycamores, and join the great loneliness of orange moons...
Read MoreFall in Philadelphia
Days burst with time. Leaves aflame with color. We trudged through neat piles toward grownup-hood. We had all that we wanted. Youth untouched by earthquakes and aftershocks, we found shelter from the autumn chill playing touch football with neighbors. Unaware we wanted for nothing. This morning an oil painting beckons— a gazebo strewn with wispy vines and landscape of pink blossoms— draws me to dream, backward and forward. We want all that we...
Read MoreCauldron
The cauldron of sunset Slight rain across the forest A tree’s calm presence, its roots deep under the surface of things, hidden within earthen mold and a mightier silence A tree’s calm presence, a tree’s calm presence A mightier silence of earth.
Read MoreThe Garden of God
The last thing left is this slab of stone dead Cold, numbered and lettered rising From the earth’s brown green grass, Dead flowers in bright bouquets with plastic Stems and petals pink, orange, Torn, faded, wind, rain, saboteurs. Every now and then someone comes And comforts the stone, lays a hand across it, Traces numbers and letters with a finger. Someone cuts away the weeds, finds new Pieces of plastic, cleans up the debris. Here the House of Job. The House of Sisyphus. The Mansion of Worry and Sometimes...
Read MoreBiophilia
Love of Nature 1 In my wife’s garden darkening at dusk bats flit soundlessly above azaleas and forsythias. While in the shadows below in the final moments of twilight paper-thin pink morning glories glow. 2 I don’t know what plants are growing in the shade down beneath the bird feeder but they’re growing so I haven’t the heart to clip them or pluck them out or cover them up with peat moss or mulch. 3 Sitting out on the back deck watching the sky with all its blue tumbling down through the branches and leaves of the trees reaching all the way to the ground. 4 In the middle of the...
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