01 Wednesday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
arrowleaf balsamroot, Bird Poems, Crows, Gratitude, Happiness, Hog Lake, Hog Lake Falls, Hope, Horse, Horse Poems, Horses, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, Spirit, Spokane, spring poem, Waterfalls
The ground sounds hollow,
an echoing cadence of hoofbeats
follows among ponderosa, & a caw-caw
of wood raven, forest spies tattling
on our prattling happy chatter,
while hawks circle the pool
at the base of hog lake falls,
& balsamroot whispers
about the perfection of it all.
09 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Crows, Hot Summers, Husbands, John Lennon, John Lennon's Death, Madness, Murder, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, Red Tail Hawks, Souls, The Atlantic, The Atlantic Magazine, Wives
Everyday, I try to find peace
In a world that killed Lennon;
Not only peace, but poetry.
The skies are open here, broken
Only by straggly stands of Ponderosa,
And, from my place on this earth
I can see the Red Tails hunting
Over the fields, and two crows
Gathering at the barn, for what—
To eat something that’s dead there?
Or, the thing I choose to believe,
A kindred reconnection of souls.
Today, I don’t want to know
The truth. It’s too hot.
Almost 100 degrees and much of what
Was on the verge of madness,
Has gone wholly to madness.
A husband entered a building, killed his wife.
Another man admitted doing the same
Only a short drive away.
Israel is at war, again, with Hamas,
As I sit and read The Atlantic, contemplating
The creative, communal genius of rock stars.
And, trying to find peace in a world
That shot John Lennon four times In the back.
06 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
When our black cat lay dead
at the foot of the crooked mailbox,
her sister circled nearby in the trees.
Three days later, she too was gone.
I thought I’d heard before,
cats will disappear
when someone dies.
Often, in trees near our house,
we see hawks, hear crows,
sometimes, they fight.
There is a madness in the trees;
it resembles our own madness.
Like the funerals of crows,
their gathering in trees,
their communal mourning,
their many scold calls.
Have you heard them?
They go on like that
over their dead.
Coyotes also gather in sound;
their howls manic and frantic,
the way we imagine demons,
if there were demons.
There is a place in the trees
where everything disappears:
cats, crows, even coyotes.
It’s a dark mystery we dream,
the sounds coming to us on wind,
through lonely skies,
and brutal, beautiful trees.
