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?
