10/19
to passing traffic
along the Hudson River Park
tell me
and I’ll listen
for tales of ways
I’ve not lived
enough,
tell me now,
and I’ll speak it back
in breath and blood
before it’s been
too long.
**
Indian Summer
The leaves, since Sunday, the leaves in the tree
across the street, yellowing green to gold
and the river, the river too, minute to minute,
its face rippling light.
**
10/21
Through the tunnel under the river,
the bus moves south through Jersey woods,
where fall befalls hills turned lonely with color,
where rains loose their hold, skies turn whole
and memories
speak to things never forgotten
to a child’s eyes.
**
10/22
Farmington
Promises only a river can make
fill night air here, drip wind-blown banks
and those who walk the Delaware.
Staggered tangles and leaf-shorn branches
cry out the silent rift, as singular leafs
turn to trace the falling season.
**
And at once outside, and morning,
brisk, low-coming sun
lays brush to the bellies
of a wedge of ducks
made gold
in the first blue
of day.
*****
The gathering…
in the subtle retention of place and role,
the older cousin of the oldest friend,
even into our seventies, serves
and nurtures the flame:
blessed are the memory keepers
*
after fifty years plus, the handshake
of the once serious, once young man
is stiff; but familiar features and tone
fracture timid distance, and time as well,
the parting gathering of arms
telling the longer story
*
warm smiles, quiet good-byes,
none of us making promises
of again
*****
Crescent City Witness
There, above the fluid swirls of the Mississippi,
the bottom-crescent moon and a solitary star
watch day break
over accrued river darkness,
over its great, un-rushed turn,
till sky at last suggests
the reach into blue.
**
There’s certain momentum that comes
of time spent over an open page
filling with word forms,
with weight and tone,
with meaning, unfolding there like so many
scattered scratches left behind on the playground,
the business of play complete, the children
turning their attention elsewhere,
original motivations not so different
from our own.
**
A Seasonal Story
November First came at that first click,
along with Very Dark, who lingered steady,
even as Seven AM arrived, like some secret
signal to Winter, who I swear I saw there,
right then, but distant, raise its head
like from a pillow—Very Dark held still,
waited—Winter slowly laying back, mumbling
something I couldn’t make out.
It was too far off, and raining.
Very Dark then left.
**
At first light, the deep-throated engine
of the young neighbor’s car, clears itself
back to life, then settles again, this time
in well-tuned, low-humming readiness,
just as I do when waiting the next word
from the grandchild’s smiling lips,
watching that irrepressible light, that spark,
there in his eyes, that calls out
that same dance and pulse
to mine, calls back the why behind the what
that enables us both to see the wonder
to be seen there.
