Thursday, October 21, 2010

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?