A weekday morning at the beginning Of another year. Quite cold and quite Silent. A wind from southwest Is only felt and not heard, for I had Raked its leafy tongue away yesterday.

A pair of small birds, wrens or titmice, Streak by and vanish into the fog. I take my right palm out of the pocket Of my Levis and follow it as it vanishes. I look down and my feet have already vanished.

I suppose birth, that first thing we forget To remember, that amorphous beginning From a fluid in the sac, is like this. I also suppose so is death, that final Unexplainable border we step across, step into.

On a country road we drove Back and forth, lost. The twin banks Of night, a reproach to that wandering With the barn owl and the firefly.

Then we stumbled upon the lane We didn’t see, and then onto the drive To disembark, under the watch Of countless stars, at a possibility Called home.

[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.