[1]

We think too much of ourselves As separate from the earth and all The mysteries it sustains. So are the seeds of destruction Sown and hunger becomes an old Addiction, and satisfaction exiled.

How many of us have held up A leaf recently and marveled at That perfection and how many Have faced the mirror wishing For a more beautiful shadow!

[2]

These past years, I have flitted Like a bird from branch to branch As if on fire, as if stillness was A stalking cat. These past years In which the oaks have added Merely three more rings.

[3]

The window becomes a grid Of four visions: green grass, A thicket of brambles and vines, Trees pulling the eye skywards, From where it belayed back On the thread of rain streaking Past the window.

[4]

The helmeted hemlock wearing Wrong camouflage for the season, Two squirrels playing tag around A seated Buddha, mushrooms Lined up like Lilliputian soldiers On a rotting log and a red headed Woodpecker bobbing up the bark Are already present in this place, Into which I shuffle in, A late worshipper.

Your voice cracking Was a glass bangle breaking.

…

In the distance, a train is whistling. Gunfire, rails are rattling.

As a coin is flattened into a pendant, Time is pressed into remembering.

In the garden, the earth is waiting. How to thirst, is it’s teaching.

…

Soon the cold cranes will arrive, Rains will arrive, the guest will arrive.

Sweep the house, paint the doorways, Beat the drums, holler. Let him hear And see you dancing to the innermost music.

…

They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old. – W.B. Yeats

Your sounds however, have died, and I hear nothing, Standing here, amidst bare beeches aglow is dawn’s fire.

We must have whispered our questions And declarations for only my protestations ring clear.

What was that you desired most and what was that I did not possess? As ice cold glasses mist over,

Many winters have obscured your image. And we now awaken In separate cities, in separate beds, next to still separated bodies.

Then what is that of you, that which even my heart forgot, My hot blood, rustling and snaking in the carpet of rusting beech Leaves, hungers and hunts this morning?