Has Fall Arrived?

After the rain,

the patter

of children’s voices

**

I revise more now than before,

on the spot and after the fact

adjustments, little ones

keep things aright

on course

as best as I can

for now.

**

Across open pastures

above bluffs

crashing breakers

gulls

wind

**

In the rented cottage

the turned page crinkles

echoes of itself

the refrigerator hums

the room

dull pencils rub

words

and a settled heart

keeps prefect

time

**

the writing,

replete with lessons

for the poet

**

out of the dark

a train

a history

**

Words are the stuff of human horizons

and like all else can be used

as common currency

or to build.

It’s not a matter of which ones,

but how we meet them

--shallow currents carry traces

of the deeper--

it’s all in the way we hear.

**

Misguided, we wonder what to do,

yet how to be

suggests the peace we seek.

**

late summer

open widow

childhood memories

**

Scratching at the window,

a Jay in the flowerbox—

up and gone!

**

Mappo: a Buddhist term, suggestive of a time when gifts

that sustain are barely recognized.

Poetically, it might point to the voice that can only hear itself

and never once considers

from where its words, or its capacity for speech, come.

Street lamps cast shadows

in early morning, throughout

evening time, and late

into the night—is there need

at all for moon light?