21 Wednesday Feb 2018
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The aspen is clothed,
Its limbs reach toward heaven
Alight with rime and worship:
A great one has passed
At ninety nine years–
The lives that are touched
At ninety nine years–
Mine, my grandfather’s,
The time overlaps,
spreads over the landscape
So that all are touched,
All are clothed.
It is zero today,
And I wanted to write
That hell is cold–
Until I saw the aspen
Clothed in hoar frost.
All the world has become
The aspen, outlined in ice.
20 Tuesday Feb 2018
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I said the aspen was naked,
But maybe it’s me that’s naked.
The older I get,
The more naked I feel,
Like the aspen stripped by winter.
Its bare limbs standing still
In the fog, are they my limbs?
How terrifying!
How vulnerable!
How lonely!
Will it wake in spring?
Will I wake in spring?
19 Monday Feb 2018
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The consolation of cold days
Are the morning skies
Awash in Fire.
The naked aspen,
Outlined in blue,
And white, and gray,
Has found some solace
In its own beauty.
17 Saturday Feb 2018
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“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.”
The return of winter,
During Winter:
As we slept
It snowed eight inches.
Eight inches.
Enough to obliterate
The grass, starting to green.
I dreamt
Of being abandoned–
And woke to find
you’d been up since 4 am.
The House was warm,
As if the furnace
Had suddenly become efficient.
Too efficient, I thought,
As I watched the light
Gradually increase outside.
You see, there was no sun.
Not in this bleak mid-winter.
You’d say it was white,
But I’d say it was gray–
A tinge of darkness–
The unknown, like a fog
Near the barn.
The aspen,
Its white body–
elegant and erotic–
Naked in the snow,
Stripped completely bare
And framed by the fog–
Was so still.
Yes, it was still as death.
A corpse,
And, if it had started to dream,
It dreamt no more–
Unless, it too dreamt of being abandoned.
16 Friday Feb 2018
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The aspen’s branches are bare,
The wind speaks through chimes:
Winter, winter, winter, it says,
As if it knows no other word.
Did it forget the crocus,
Its alien spathe piercing the ground,
petals struggling
To escape the cocoon?
Did it forget the wild irises,
Dotting the pasture,
Tall, elegant, blushed in plum?
Or, the branches
Heavy with apple blossoms,
And the apples,
The gelding ate from her hands:
Open hands, the juice of the fruit?
Today, it plays dumb.
The bare tree waves
Its empty arms,
While snow shifts and drifts,
And the outside chandelier
Swings like a crystal pendulum
Trying to divine,
Will the cold ever end?
While the wind speaks,
Saying, Winter,
Winter,
Winter.
14 Wednesday Feb 2018
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You extend your right arm
For me to come in and lay down.
We’ve done it, like this,
At least five thousand,
Four hundred seventy five times,
The exact same, wonderful way.
And always,
You are the first to disappear,
Leaving me to your heart’s beating,
The rise and fall of your chest,
Its hair tickling my nose.
I think, should I die before you,
You will remember this,
And no lover will quite take my place–
Not in this deepest intimacy.
Did I say I love you—
Before you went away in dreams?
Did I say I love you?
24 Friday Nov 2017
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Is this what it’s like
To be dead?
A big FAT blank.
Not even being able to think–
Is this what it’s like
To be dead?
************
Nothing.
************
Nothing.
************
Nothing.
************
Hello!
************
Is this what it’s like
to be born?
The whole world
In front of you.
Your happy places,
Spread like golden pastures
Just waiting for you to gallop through,
Thinking, singing, screaming–
Is this what it’s like
to be born?
02 Tuesday May 2017
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We must move together,
One mind, one soul,
One body, one purpose,
Says the herd.
We’ll bend our necks
To the ground,
Bite off blades of grass,
Like so: the Mustang,
The palomino mare,
The old sorrel gelding.
See how our heads line up?
Front, right legs forward,
One ear to the herd,
The other to the sky,
And bird sound:
The high pitch
Of the kildeer,
nesting in grass nearby,
The chattering of the geese,
The barn swallows,
returned to their nests,
Above our stalls.
We hear their song,
A composition,
Carried by the wind,
Through pine,
Through aspen,
Through crocus
And snowdrops.
We must move together,
One mind, one soul,
One body, one purpose,
Says the herd.
26 Wednesday Apr 2017
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1.
Under the wings of Canada Geese,
Rushed time:
Moments we wept
In our loss,
Wept in our fear,
Abandoned each other.
I stood alone,
Amid an ocean of dry leaves,
As the sky flew by in freedom,
And helplessness.
2.
How can I forget
That great yellow butterfly,
As big as a barn swallow?
It hovered around you,
Like a message
You wouldn’t hear.
Finally, it landed on your bare shoulder,
As you stopped work,
Leaned against your shovel,
Encircled of frail spirit,
And our children,
Chasing, laughing around you.
While I, woman in flight,
Watched silently from the back door,
Knowing I was letting you go.
28 Saturday Jan 2017
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Tags
Aspen Trees, Hope, Lilacs, Loss, Mt Spokane, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ponderosa Pine, Yearning
The way the sun lit the branches of the aspen,
Traced the snow-lined needles of the Ponderosa,
Shone off each blade of grass in the dry circle
underneath that great pine, surrounded by snow.
I said, the way, as if it would lead to a thought,
But, in fact, it leads to fog, or the lifting of it,
Near the tiny Lilac bushes,
And, further still, across the blanket of snow–
A blanket that someone lay upon,
But not under, leaving an impression of a body,
The soft parts, blown away
From the crisp, frozen parts.
Look further still, through the lifting,
You’ll see the great Spokane Mountain,
And all the trees and houses
Which lead from here to there.
For a moment, you may think you can touch it,
Stretch, reach out your hand,
Trace your fingertips along its lonely edges,
And lift it into your arms.
17 Tuesday Jan 2017
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Dead Cat
I miss her sleeping
beneath moon flowers
her slow desire of green spring
her sacred wild killing
I want to be that vast
To delight in cold birch
Grass & sky fire.
Eternity
eternity is a cry
a laugh
a whisper
It is a troubling mess
A concrete death.
They harvest fabulous yellow flowers
with joy and poetry
03 Tuesday Jan 2017
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Tags
Mozart, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Silence, Song and Poetry, What is a Poem
The music is not in the notes, but the silence between.
–Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
2.
Even the world’s silence sings out to us,
The tension of what will come,
Always greater than what is.
Yes, a poem is a song,
Because everything,
Everything,
Is music.
03 Tuesday Jan 2017
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Capo 3 (Am, Em, G, C)
His letter arrived on January Two,
He said the British were coming, but the snow came, too,
And they didn’t have food, and they didn’t have shoes,
He wanted to be home, but had to stay through.
Chorus:
Dan, Dan, come home to me if you can.
Leaving now won’t make you less of a man.
Come home to me now, if you can.
Come home to me now, if you can.
Soldiers were buried like sheep in the snow,
They were almost smothered by the storm.
The salt water froze, so the boats stood still,
And there wasn’t an escape from that wintry hell.
Chorus.
By the time my words arrived, Dan was already gone.
He didn’t have a chance to heed my sweet begging song.
And, the storm went its way, as if it hadn’t ever come,
And the world went on and on.
Dan, Dan, you’ll always be my sweet lovin’ man.
You’d have come to me if you’d had the chance,
But the world had other plans.
Yes, the world had other plans.
31 Saturday Dec 2016
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Fingerpick C, G, Am, F repeat
Who are you,
And where are you beautiful.
Where’s your song,
That you must sing?
Lose yourself,
In all that is beautiful,
What’s torn apart,
What’s crumbling.
What’s Crumbling?
Improvise
Let me hear
Your sweet song.
What makes you cry?
What sets you free?
It’s you and me
On the edge of losing
All we have,
To eternity–
To eternity.
Improvise
Tell me now,
Where are you beautiful.
What makes you cry?
What makes you sing?
27 Tuesday Dec 2016
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Tags
1.
Let’s be honest,
No one cares how your poem
Is a reflection of you.
They care how it is
A reflection of them.
And when I say no one,
I mean me.
And you.
23 Friday Dec 2016
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There’s a rule among birds,
If it’s singing, it can’t be killing,
Which may, or may not, be true,
Except for the family of plump chickadees,
Who wintered beneath our cedar arch.
With their black caps and gray-backed wings,
They flitted from rail, to pan, to chair, to deck,
To aspen perch, peeking in at us,
Until I plucked my first A minor–
The 3rd and 5th string,
A melancholy chord found in most songs,
Even the chickadees’, it turns out,
When they hear you sing.
15 Thursday Dec 2016
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“We didn’t want anything else but freedom.
This world doesn’t like freedom.”
Abdulkafi Alhamdo, Professor of English, Last Call from Aleppo
What is Aleppo?
All that it was, or dreamed to be,
In rubble. Have you seen rubble?
It’s what hope looks like when it’s collapsed,
Reduced to broken chunks of asphalt
And twisted, distorted beams of rebar.
It’s brown. Not dark brown, but light brown,
The color of dust.
There is no truth, but suffering,
And the realization no help is coming–
No haloed army, no golden trumpets,
No white horses or heroes.
The choices you made,
In your heart of hearts,
Choice, like stone in your heart,
That is Aleppo now–
Stone in your heart.
15 Thursday Dec 2016
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The cold that is loneliness–
Ice, snow, hunger.
Did we care
The days had shortened?
Dark mornings,
Dark afternoons,
We stumbled, it’s true,
But don’t we all stumble,
Slide on the ice–
A dangerous toboggan
Of metal and glass and rubber
Just sliding,
sliding, sliding.
Where will it stop–
Against a sign, a bank of snow,
An oncoming car?
We turn the wheel
Left, then right, then left
And tap on the brakes,
Hoping they will catch
Onto something solid.
My love, turns out
You were the solid thing
On which I caught.
21 Thursday Jan 2016
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Tags
Beaty's Butte, Beautiful Girl, Beautiful Mustang, Horse, Horse Poems, Horses, Mustang, mustang poems, mustangs, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Wild Horse Poetry, Wild Horses
Beautiful Mustang
Beaty’s Butte, Oregon 2007
Some things survive
Despite capture,
Despite fear.
Like memory,
How it felt
To take those first
Feeble, free steps,
Then stretch your neck
Toward breasts,
And the reward
Of warm milk.
The world was starving,
But some things survived,
Like the smell of sage
When your bodies
Lay down at night
And crushed the stems.
You dreamt of flight,
On strong legs;
You dreamt of rest,
Under the mahogany’s shade.
Some things survived,
Like the smell
Of your dam’s fur in rain,
The smell of her sweat.
The sound of her separation
survived, too,
The calling back and forth
From pen to pen,
Your first real lesson
On what it’s like
To be loved.
That way.
In the way
Of the terrible missing.
Some things survive,
Despite capture,
Despite fear.
Like memory.
17 Thursday Dec 2015
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Sit deep, deep in the saddle,
Your ankle, hip, and shoulder
A line, that dissects some star
And continues past,
“Where does space end,”
The question your teacher asked
In the fifth grade.
Which is to say, it never ends,
And I can’t help thinking,
I don’t either,
Nor does this horse,
Engulfed in her own heat,
Evaporating into the cold air
Of another December.
What is it about two souls
That makes the one feel alive,
Connected, two dots, through which
A line extends forever,
Pierces a fabric, so thin,
We were together all along,
Though we didn’t know.
Bits of Poetry 