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My favorite isn’t the new one painted red to resemble a barn,filled with bins of vegetables and miles of imported mums. I pass it by for the one small as an afterthought
On a working farm. One open roofed shed
faded to soft unpainted gray
A few shelves and a locked aluminum cash box but
Out front the father tipped a hay bale on its side painted it orange
with a jack o lantern face on one round edge
A long open cart roadside holds a few dozen mums grown behind the barns. The busy mom who teaches elementary school alternates colors while her 7th grade daughter prefers rows, a swath of yellow, then white, then deep red, then purple, orange, yellow again
The grandma is head of this artistic clan
her art installation pleases me every year
When she places the smallest pumpkins
miniature plump and orange
one on top of every fence post
where they’ll stay
till winter brushes them away

Amid such worries, this–
sunshiney weekend
hammock, book
Every so often a rest from reading
by filling up with maple trees
who shine and spangle in the breeze
Inventing the dappled light
here we were, for hours, full and green

breathing here
for far less than 19 years,
our masked students
return Not yet singing
but nervous, flippant,
sleepy, smiling, tense,
chattering, brittle,
brave but
not yet boisterous
Not yet.

In the newly quiet house
far older than 19 years,
the walls remember

On the table
the Japanese lanterns
glow orange in their vase
even in the dark

After all the years
of new shoes and lunch boxes
and pictures I took in our front yard
of her smiling and hopeful and ready for school
now it’s me with first day jitters
And she remembers,
and texts me good luck
which all by itself
fills me up with four leaf clovers
green luck and gratefulness
flourish in the first day air

summer is leaving
whether you say goodbye or not

So stop pretending you haven’t noticed.
Remember good manners
Write a thank you note
For all of June, July, August
And whatever marvelous gifts
or gardens or warm nights
you received. Tuck your note
into tall grass, or under the swing,
or beneath the basil in its bright blue pot
Snail trails and mud and crickets
will track and chew and dampen
your words will sink into the ground
carrying memories you want to hold
and all you’d just as soon forget
Summer reads them all,
and writes back promises to return

World woke sky changed

while I fretted over it on paper

and missed the showiest part of sunrise

another signal, another sign

from this world that keeps unfurling

exploding and dancing and cooking

breakfast and growing peaches

while I scramble its jigsaw pieces

head down and searching for

the answers. Stop. Just stop.

this world will not be solved

by diligence.
Look up

She says, Would you like some hydrangeas?
Cuts branch after branch of huge white blossoms
says, I’ve been meaning to prune them back.
A sweet and possibly invented excuse.
But who can tell, busy as you are,
cradling what she hands you?
Armfuls of blossoms
and blossoms and branches of blossoms

outdoors, early
I watch for signs in the heavens
on what might or might not
be the last night of the Perseids

trying to be noisy enough
to scare off yard-wandering
opossums, skunks, bears, bats, bugs

trying to be quiet enough
to not wake the neighbors

One more in a long string of balancing acts

the sky opaque and speckled
to my kitchen light dazzled eyes

Then
like in all the best stories, where what you seek
arrives just before you give up
One star, bright tail of light shoots overhead

a Sign, I decide, that we’ll all be Okay.
Okay.
a word whose definition is as fuzzy
as the fixed stars fading from this lightening sky

pink clouds, crescent moon
soft gray trees slowly appear
rise through morning fog

night and day, this world
a continuous factory
of beauty, handing it out
everywhere, for free

The world behaves as if
it loves this job–
to keep tapping us on the shoulder.

Impatient, distracted,
we raise our heads up from our worries
and look where the world points–
Sunflower, laughing toddler,
Rain puddle, star
Look, says the world,
There is all this, too.

All the small birds
dart and swoop full
of being busy become
insubstantial
when heron crosses the sky
Slow calm
a deep breath
after many fast and shallow days