Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
See also my Woodrat photoblog and my Flickr account.
given back
to the forest
my walking stick
missing you
the blue
of a distant lake
almost April
maples redding up
for the breeze
walking home
the shush
that crushed stone makes
a raven’s croak
there’s nowhere to hide
from these blues
first a festival of gestures
and some time to genuflect
to a higher hierophant
as if anyone still puts stock
in stick figures
unlikely ever to leaf out
unlikeable to lichen
too glossy for moss
untender as tinder
but sticks in the mud are needed
to feed the smoke machine
and please a little siezer
some might be ham-
fingered fecklusters
while others must be utter
butter-fisted tooltips
but all stick to their figures
and abandon their posts
on highway signage
and warning lables
who will coddle the muddle-
headed now
their everyman act puts actual
everypeople to shame
the deep state’s
deepest fakes
their winter of discontent
comes with the best
most luxurious fireplaces
till ashes ashes
and an insurgent May
putting my phone away
the plushness of the moss
at its greenest now
at the end of a hard winter
a butterfly dances past
like a lost carnival float
the naked trees sway
gray and weather-eaten
i find a habitable hush
in the shade of a pine
though from time to time
a moan interjects
the sound of friction
with a too-close neighbor
a wild lettuce seed drifts
on a pompon of down
up over the mountain
and out across the valley
where every raw patch
of plowed or scoured earth
calls to the migrant killdeer
as an unclaimed shore
a chaos of paths
stops me in my tracks
tumbleweed AKA windwitch
stuck in the icy crust
while moss and lichen
nearby are melting free
touseled but upright
with gray cups upraised
a crushed plastic water bottle
rests like a saint in its icy crypt
the ground shakes
from a coal train
one piece of passing graffiti says
in gothic letters GET OUT
crown shyness as they call it
saves the trees
from foreign entanglements
as shrinkwrapped
in ice they glitter
and shed dead limbs
now in my woodstove
a tongue of flame makes
a knot explode
smoke from my chimney
sinks to the ground
and ghosts off into the forest
where i soon follow
over the ice
with chains on my feet
seeking patches of snow
left behind by the wind
for news of spring
chipmunk forays
out of hibernation
the braided tracks of coyotes
bright green
scraps of moss
dug up by a squirrel
what snow reveals
in hiding the ground
is no less than the lay of the land
under her fur of bare trees
the curves become clear
their geologic easier to follow
plain as a line of tracks
snow’s other revelation
how the land does in fact
belong to many others
who happen to keep
largely to themselves
as witnessed by hoarfrost
forming at the mouth of a burrow
from some deep breather
in a dreamless den
or the snow angel left
by an owl’s midnight raid
the splay of featherprints
a few drops of blood
disappearing in a squall
the snow showing its truest face
and when it stops
the air smells cleaner
a junco pours out his song
beside the spring
its dark water a refuge
from all this seeing
wolf down a dog’s
breakfast of hype
cry in unison
use every lost key
feed the feedback
pierce some eardrums
that’s how unutterable
this wolf is
hold haters in contempt
be holocaustic
inspire fear
freeze in the headlights
disbelieve that anyone might choose
the actual wolf
i follow my mother’s tracks
following a porcupine
where it dragged a tree-
filled belly over
the snow striped with shadows
like the sky striped with clouds
the black-and-white
of woodpecker wings
on the horizon the other
end of this very mountain
curled like a blue cat
in the January sun
whither the snows of yesteryear
if not in this very weather
stand under a conifer’s fur
and begin to understand
absence prickling in the nose
no good or bad scents
furrows drift over as if
the storm were a harrow
aches forgotten i’m agog
at snow falling through oaks
inevitable snowflakes in my tea
taste of the ineffable
snow falls in the darkness
drops like the latest style
it’s the night’s whitest isle
till the wind picks up and it all goes
sideways like Marilyn Monroe’s
irrepressible dress