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Putting It Off
Sitting in windows at night black cats and their masters look out on summer; the moon feeds their yellow visions, the opened windows cool them… …One wants nothing to happen forever, and thinks of...
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A Fit of Elegy
photo by Harry Rodenberger Except to prompt a fit of elegy It is for us no more, or if it is, It is a sort of music for the eye, A rugged ground bass like the bagpipe’s drone On which the leaf-light...
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There is More to Tragedy
My friend, old and passing, said, “There is more to life than staying alive. Don’t rescue me too much.” On his farm, twelve miles out by rough gravel roads, he is done with plowing, spraying,...
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Decomposition
I’ve banked nothing, or everything. Every day the chores need doing again. Early in the morning, I clean the horse barn with a manure fork. Every morning, it feels as though it could be the day...
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Again and Again
This hour along the valley this light at the end of summer lengthening as it begins to go this whisper in the tawny grass this feather floating in the air this house of half a life or so...
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Morning Breaks to Silence
Well I know now the feel of dirt under the nails, I know now the rhythm of furrowed ground under foot, I have learned the sounds to listen for in the dusk, the dawning and the noon. I have held...
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This Surge of Hill
Here, on this surge of hill, I find myself not as I am or will be or once was, not as the measure of days defines my soul; beyond all that a being of breath and bone, partaker of wind and sun and...
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The Doorway Into Thanks
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a...
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So Much Alike
It rained all weekend, but today the peaked roofs are as dusty and warm as the backs of old donkeys tied in the sun. So much alike are our houses, our lives. Under every eave— leaf, cobweb, and...
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Swift Autumn
photo by Nate Gibson Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s...
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Untangling the Threads
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors which it passes to a row of ancient trees. You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth....
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Every Every Minute
Happy Thanksgiving from our farm to yours…. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in...
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Lonely Light
our first snowfall of the season just started Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the...
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Celebrating His Arrival: From Gloom to Hope
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt...
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Prepare for Joy: Blown Away
It has been a relatively warm wet week in the northwest, so it seemed reasonable after finishing up farm chores last night to leave the large rolling north-south doors wide open in the barn where the...
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Blossom Cheeks
Lined with light the twigs are stubby arrows. A gilded trunk writhes Upward from the roots, from the pit of the black tentacles. In the book of spring a bare-limbed torso is the first illustration....
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A Case of the Dwindles
“Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.” Emily Dickinson I’m finally adjusted to our children being grown and away from home: I no longer instinctively grab too many plates and utensils when setting...
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Caught Downstream
First fluid flows in trickling stream then gushes in sudden drench soaking, saturating, precipitating inevitability. No longer pillowed inside, pushed and sliding, following the rich river downstream....
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A Message to the Future
And this is where we went, I thought, Now here, now there, upon the grass Some forty years ago. The days being short now, simply I had come To gaze and look and stare upon The thought of that once...
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