Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
See also my Woodrat photoblog and my Flickr account.
awoken by a dying rabbit
its shrieks in the night
i dream a cleaver-shaped moon
rain soft as fur
in the small hours even
the mosquitoes are sleeping
i listen to the surf of blood
pulsing in my temples
a cloud has come down for us
we don’t need to rise
linked-verse sequence
small talk…
the enormity
of the heat
dog day cicadas
in and out of sync
calling once
for old times’ sake
wood pewee
a hay rake at rest
with its teeth turned up
distant shot
or just the ice settling
in a glass
the old picnic blanket
attracting hornets
swimming hole
the low drone
of an incoming horsefly
blades of deer tongue grass
parsing out the shade
dolls’ eyes
clustered on a stalk
daddy longlegs
her schizophrenic brother
searching the sky
downpour
the sudden press of bodies
under a roof
amanita half-eaten
by a white fog of mold
what makes me think
i alone can stay dry
we appear to have entered
a monsoon season
and the spongy moths are mating
having prospered during the drought
the dusty-winged males flutter up
at my every step
through an ankle-high
grove of sassafras sprouts
to my seat against an oak
the sassafras in my thermos
and a seethe of traffic
from the interstate below
losing all its teeth
in the rain-fattened moss
a foot away from my right foot
a green stick caterpillar
clings to the end
of a ghost pipe
the way new beliefs
take root in a convert
held up rigidly
against the clouds
sun summoning from a white sky
the ridgetop oaks’ fuzzy shadows
gnomons enough to mark
the summer solstice
in one patch of half-sunlight
a box turtle’s red eye blinks
while a scarlet tanager flutters
in the canopy on dark wings
how cool the ghosts
of burning forests have kept us
it’s late morning and i’m still
in long sleeves
a breeze pages through the oaks
a revelation of caterpillars
and the tanager is a quick study
warbling as he hunts
one tree bears a vertical slit
of sky and leaves
crossed by a wide scar
straight through the heartwood
where two intertwined trunks
failed to fuse
and this cross made by a cross
bears an immense green crown
as it should for standing up
to all our weather
eyelids drooping i walk on
into a summer afternoon
the field has its sparrows
and the eastern wood its pewees
but i am melancholy as a catbird’s
parody of a wood thrush
for true refinement can only
be learned from the masters
which is perhaps why the sun
in firefly season
models itself after
that glowworm the moon
1
hiding out is hard
you get mistaken for a hermit
beaches are retreating inland
water is retreating to the sea
i continue to dwindle
like an old seed potato
giving all i have
to my wandering eye
2
i’ve taken to sleeping
in a sleek reflective coffin
i’m trying to trick the planet
into swallowing me
3
reverse engineers
reinvent the wheel as a halo
sugar too was once
a rare gift
then some sold others
into slavery for it
far away they said
in a new world
4
everywhere more alone
in an expanding universe
dark are the matters
preoccupying the stars
millipede under
the lip of my rock
curling into a question mark
as i stand to go
among mountain laurel blossoms
their sticky white cups
falling in the drought-stricken woods
with audible ticks
we’ve had a taste of rain
the moss is soft underfoot
the breeze carries the despairing
rage of a pair of birds
watching their children die
in the sunless tunnel of a snake
who is presumably savoring
her only meal of the week
knowledge of good and evil
extracts a terrible toll
while two trains
meet at a crossing
two broken chords disharmonizing
clear to high heaven
the way my two grandmothers
sometimes meet in me
the strident one
and the contemplative one
on bad air days when everyone
else also sees
this achingly beautiful planet
through a veil of ash
and i don’t know how it seems
to extraterrestrial visitors
but on earth the truth is bitter
it’s an acquired taste
sun in the crowns
of the oaks
ringing less
like a church bell
than the beeper on a truck
backing into a quarry pit
coming over top of the mingled
voices of birds
whose throats each mix
two vocal tracks
into a single braid ah
the wood thrush
redstart red-eyed vireo
and that alluring odor
from a bank of dame’s-rocket
trembling in one spot
i thought just as a chipmunk’s
tail was disappearing
into the lilies
of the valley
*
Natures are close to one another. It is by practice that they become far apart.
Kongzi, Analects 17.2 (tr. Brian W. Van Norden)
found in a flower
one beetle’s quota of sleep
longhorned to graze
in pastures of white
Clintonia or Solomon’s plume
and soon the black cohosh
looking up i spot a raccoon’s
wide-eyed mask
returning my gaze from the crotch
of a dying hemlock
every day has its dog
on Thursday for a long moment
i walked with a yearling bear
ahead of me on the trail
whose walk is it then
one can only wander
on the steep slope
above the railroad
i find a patch of jacks-in-the-pulpit
that the deer missed
a train hurtles past with blue
containers of stink
our daily delivery of refuse
from the megalopolis
i climb through century-old quarries
rocks shift underfoot
still settling
where mountain holly blooms
the breeze wafts ambrosia
from some reclusive azalea
i pause for breath
a vireo chirps in alarm
i stop for lunch
a hooded warbler scolds
down-trail a second-generation
mourning cloak butterfly
circles its dappled
patch of sun
territory folks defending
their stake in the sticks
while a distant cuckoo
chants her own name
gorging on tent caterpillars
and spotted lanternfly larvae
letting strangers
foster her offspring
this is the background
i can’t include in my shots
whenever i stop to snap photos
of new or bigger plants
how green is my mountain now
with so much CO2 in the air
my ankles brush against
the Aladdin lamps of pale corydalis
rising through the still-tender
hayscented ferns
and a mosquito sinks her rig
right through my hat
the sun may descend into haze
but the light’s still perfect
the mountain’s shadow stretching
across the farm valley to my east
i watch a manure spreader
ply the rows of a sterile field
growing the dead zone
out of mind in the Chesapeake
until the wind shifts
and i beat a retreat
back from my walk i turn
the garden with a fork
straining out noodley roots
of invasive brome
dry fists of dirt
crumble at the touch
one must leave the garden
of earthly delights
where it belongs in a chest
or dresser drawer
the true Beulah is more ordinary
swaying on its stalk
lure and haven for a host
of nectar-seekers
blooming quick as thought
before the trees sprout new shadows
shaped like gaywings bellwort
mayflower windflower
thin as a spindle
in the fat of the land
or massive as an old red oak
encircled by bear corn
supplicants turned parasitic
must leave their own leaves behind
diminutive towers flowering
out of the ground
till the corollas lose
their erections
and the teeth of the calyx
turn brown and drop
what would you give up
for a life of ease
the garden of earthly delights
slithers on its belly
quieting the cries of nestlings
one by one
it lives as angels do
only in the moment of contact
upside-down and electric
from a thundercloud’s dark soil
a devastating epiphany
heartwood preserved in charcoal form
as the oak grows its hollow
for wilder life
Barely noticed below the riot of spring wildflowers, last year’s leaves are breaking down into a common duff. Towhees aren’t as noisy now as they rummage for roughage.
deer skull and spine
on the old skid road
stretching my legs
Even the once-waxy oak leaves have worn thin, though the tailoring is still sharp—a close fit to the planet, which I see caricatured in a freshly fallen oak apple gall, green and glistening, the remains of its hacked leaf sticking out like a hitchhiker’s thumb.
standing water—
a birch tree perches
atop each stump
It’s humid. As the air warms, a cloud of gnats gathers around my hat.
snap
of a flycatcher’s beak—
winter’s gone