through wooden fence slats
sun paints yellow stripes across
the freshly mown grass
Category Archives: Nature
One Of Those Really Long Poem Titles, This One Concerning What Only Becomes Visible When You Cannot Start The Gas-Powered Monstrosity And Must Tend The Spring-Shaggy Lawn With The Ancient Wood And Metal Push Mower
No Contest
Which will blossom first,
clutch of daffodils in their brown pitcher
or you?
Together, whispers that voice
outside the windows
Lift your heads and blossom
to This World
Friday’s Trick
you conjured
Spring for
one day,
conspiration
of blue sky local
crows last year’s berries
on the mountain ash.
Designated Driver
Steering by headlights,
drive into darkness
into a driving snow.
Deer herd passes by
heads bent over whatever
remains to be foraged
from the stubbled field.
One doe, head up,
watches you, or watches
the road, the snow,
the moving
yellow lines, guardrails.
Houses pass with their lit windows
like headlights in the night sky.
In this driving snow
as deer study the stars
connections
to the planet shift.
The car stands perfectly still
While the world rushes by.
There, proof— reflective signs
warning of leaping deer.
Candle, Light
Attend
How light shines
Through candle’s thin sides
Little bowl of Fire.
At the Darkest,
Coldest
Turn of the year
Thrill to something— anything
Lit up.
I see how it was
Back in the caves
How we believed
Fire
Was
Magic.
Though we learned to
Welcome it as
Warmth and Weapon
Our first love was
And always is
Light.
Maybe The Deer
aren’t as innocent as they look.
Maybe they are plotting
long into every night
to destroy all cars.
In this world, thick with deer,
maybe even now they are
hunched together in the woods
spreading topographic maps
with velvet noses or sharp antlers,
holding the corners down
with their hooves
while they assign roads to patrol,
a mission for each.
Winter Hats
Each
berry cluster
on the mountain ash
wears its tiny cap of snow
obediently. Mother tree says
that hats matter in the wintertime
Windfall
Before dawn, a crowd filled the yard.
Herds of deer, quiet, feasting on windfalls—-
pears fallen in the side yard and
seven more deer beneath the apple tree
at the edge of the field
half-hidden by the barn.
Slow to startle,
they roused themselves, remembered to run
as sky brightened and doors opened,
lights came on, shovels and motors
began making all those noises.
They ran. Except for one small doe
who lingered, stubborn and in love with
apples in the snow.
Gray Skies
Early, fields and trees and sky
all gray. Anchored by fresh snow
crevassed along the hills.
The world feels magical
as if everything is possible
and at peace.
Gray, in this moment,
is not the color of sadness
or of something worn out,
but the color of quiet–
the color of stillness
inside and out.
At Sea
These days, all my dreams
are of being at sea,
far out in water so deep
distance has a different language
fathomless
mysteries swim below me
while I watch the stars
from my small boat.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 