LATEST POSTS
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To my Aunt Cathy
Today, I came online to post that a couple of my poems were published, but this popped to the top of my library, a poem I posted four years ago. How it popped up, I will never know. Today, my Aunt Cathy is living her last breaths. We are all broken hearted. And it seems the only thing to do is to share this again. Peace –
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Pond and Brook
I leave my Pond and Brook
by the bedside,with its buzzing mayflies,
fin-splashed surface,
amoeba-soaked beach,and head downstairs,
to ease myself
through churning emailwhere minor decisions flutter
across dry laminate.All the while
the mayflies await my return,and chatter
through their own webs
of consequence. -
The hill faraway
The hill stands innocent
as it always has –empty now, or perhaps drowsily
crossed by weekend strollers.What is left of you there,
your fellow soldiers:the mud of your steps,
blood melting the snow?I breathe in here, where I am now,
and wonder if walkers there breathe you in.I ask if they have come to know you
as you were, as I never will –young, hunkered down,
slipping past signposts.Hills hold memories in their bones,
in their muscles of rocks and roots,in the chimes of their leaves overhead
where they mix them with now-life.It is for us to breathe and to witness,
to categorize if we can,
to share, to mix with our own.—————
For my father on Veteran’s Day.
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The history of my way through water
Does water remember
as I make my way across her
on this diagonal again?I clear a wake,
paddles’ light splashes,
this side, then the other.She self-heals
in a moment or two,
yet I wake-splash on.Tomorrow it will be the same –
me launching out,
she self-healing.I like to think
she takes a history down
as the ancient scholars wouldand passes it to the next paddler
on this path
if ever that should come to pass,and if never,
recalls my wake-splashes
as a giftshe could not hold
any other way
but in memory.
Inspired by Ian Stephen’s line (which is the title of this poem) quoted in Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways.
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Finding things lost
I no longer trust myself
having searched all morning
for the missing piece
in our endless jigsawand come up empty-handed –
then to find it
with a quick glance
as I poured more coffee.You ask where I left my heart –
out on the porch after dinner
or somewhere on the lake bluff?
It is true. It is somewhere.Probably in this house.
After all this searching
when we leave for work one day
we will drop a look across the roomand likely find it for all to see
half shoved, half tossed
between two pillows
on the living room couch. -
My father’s spade
leaning on a box
in my cluttered breezeway
my father’s spade pants,
grip worn smooth, tail twitching,
eager for his master