windfalls
of apples and grace
rain down like colored paper
and autumn leaves
shards of stained glass windows
frame soon to be October sky
from the harbor, I rise
with wild winged geese
in triumphant shouts
of love
and streaming eternity
within our grasp
The path folds into itself,
an origami of leaf mold and gravel.
Its edges drift into stiff hedges of
deep dried grass,
shifting ever so slightly in the spring breeze-
fluttering like paper,
paper cranes
that fold their wings
and unfurl to fly.
Someone once folded a thousand cranes,
a symbol of peace or redemption or grace,
I forget which.
These cranes took flight
and flew with ibis and stork,
heron and egret,
until the fragile paper wings drifted slowly,
silently
into the flame,
consumed.
All that was left
was an origami of ash
for me to shovel into the garden
and work into the soil
to feed the roots
and nourish our souls,
with peace or redemption
or grace.
*** For Hiroshima Day of Remembrance, a poem written several years ago.
Field Guide to the Constellations:
Each glowing light, a bit of yesterday
or 10,000 nights
or 10,000 light years ago.
If you choose to remember,
the past is always there.
Just look up-
there lies Cassiopeia Hercules Cygnus Draco-
string them together,
wear them as a crown.
dear one
the lane is swept clean of the sweet pears petals
now the small dog and I will rest
the angels will arrive soon
all is well and as it should be
yours
as always
dear one
clouds billow and jostle across the brow of the ridge
the baker had only the sweetest loaves on the counter
tea will be ready soon
all is well and as it should be
yours
as always
dear one
this morning, the cat knock over the cream
lapping it from the sunbeam pooled on the kitchen floor
all is well and as it should be
yours
as always
dear one
the angels came and rested awhile
the sweet peas are in bloom again this year
all is well and as it should be
yours
as always
with love
I am a sorter
sifting seemingly disparate objects
into their correctness
their order
the universe in its puzzlement
its state of chaos and disorder
requires only to be shown
its beauty
its infinite glory
to be put to rights
everything in its place
its correctness
its grace
The feigning moon
Hiding behind the hedge
Cocks her head as though to run down the alley
Suddenly
Leaping to the top of the old oak
She winks and smiles
The seining moon
Scoops up fistfuls of stars
Letting the waters flow through her fingertips
And into the ocean sky
The reigning moon
Crowned with comets
And sparkling diadem
Deigns look down from her sapphire throne
To our upturned faces
Where we are held rapt
And moondrunk
words that rhyme with waning part 2
I decided to write a silly poem about the moon
But your name kept coming up in conversation and with it
the way the moon looked that night
And the way the air moved with the trees
As though they had secrets to keep
There is nothing really that rhymes with the waning moon
Nothing that I can think of except that it sometimes rhymes with the snow
And sometimes with the way your blues eyes capture the moment like a polaroid camera
How is it that I have lived all these years and didn’t know
that shaking those pictures didn’t make the image appear any quicker
My impatience to see what I had just seen
To record it somehow so that it will be clearer
that waxing and waning are still metaphors
And my hair is still silver in the soft white light of the April Egg moon
He would build us kites
from the newspapers funny pages-
dull colored newsprint,
a bit of wood and a roll of string,
the kite would soar into the wind
and we knew
he was magic.
***
He would let us hold the spool,
the string tied to the kite
already out of sight
in the odd half light
of a west Texas spring late afternoon.
I would feel the tug,
urgent and insistent,
as if I could be pulled from the earth
to rise
swiftly away.
I woke this morning
feeling that pull
that urgent, insistent pull,
from almost sixty years ago,
to rise,
into the spring light,
to rise
swiftly away.
