A Modest Love


The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,

The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat;

The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,

And bees have stings,...

You Darkness


You Darkness, from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world.


Because the fires make a circle of light
so that no one can see you any more.

As You Have Done for Me




There is treasure in you.
Joi Sharp

Winter’s Tale


Even from my study at the back
of the house I can hear an orange drop
upstairs, one of the last to grow


on the dwarf tree you bought me
thirty years ago. When it tried

Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn

I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the
imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the
range of our...

We Have Lost So Much


We have lost so much
says my friend, Patty
as she carefully holds
a little bird stunned, fallen to
the base of the sky scraper
it’s just collided.

Journey Poem III
Our whole life is a search party for home,
even if someone still greets us with open arms,
even if someone broke our spirit there,
even if it was gutted and now it’s a parking...

How Does It Happen? <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens at the borders <o:p></o:p>
when grim men answer <o:p></o:p>
all questions with a flag <o:p></o:p>
and dismiss talk of civil...

Buddhist New Year Song

I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
“There are stars in your hair”— it was...

Oil
soft rainsqualls on the swells
south of the Bonins, late at night. Light
from the empty mess-hall
throws back bulky shadows
of winch and fairlead
over the slanting fantail where I stand....

A Portable Paradise


And if I speak of Paradise,
then I’m speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
That way they...

The swan does not care
if I think
it is beautiful.
The platypus is indifferent
to my laugh or scorn.


My great granddaughter--
"great" "grand" "daughter"--
what an odd and awe

The Big Picture



I try to look at the big picture.
The sun, ardent tongue
licking us like a mother besotted


with her new cub, will wear itself out.

Avot V'Imahot
Initially I resisted, then ultimately embraced their wisdom, their strength. Every day their truth pulsates through me, for they gave me breath.
L’dor V’dor.

For unimageable...

I Go Down To The Shore


I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall —
what should I do?...

When Great Trees Fall


When great trees fall,50290
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall

How the Land Talks

I am the Keeper of the Mysteries.
What I know is only understood in the imaginal realms, hence I often keep still.
I know why the seasons turn and how truth is not fathomed in...

A Walk


My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance--


and...

Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing

The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.
Notice what this poem is...

September Meditation


I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and
nights by which we count time remember their own passing.
I do not know if the oak tree remembers...

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not...

The Field That Prays



Prayer weaves its colorful strands
As we wander around the field
Inside the circle we cast in awe
Of the center where nothing resides.

We imagine our souls go there

A Day is Coming


A day is coming
in which misery will end.
A day is coming
in which poverty
will open bank accounts
in every nation.
A day is coming.

Ovid in Tears


Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. “In the cities,” he said,
“there are places walled off where...

Bearing Witness

Sometimes we are asked to stop and bear witness:
this, the elephants say to me in dreams
as they thunder through the passageways
of my heart, disappearing
into a blaze of...

Anthropocene

Even the word feels claustrophobic
Like endless lines and crowds
Of one color only. A species

Alone without context.
How lonely we have made
Ourselves, how poor.

Bullet Points

I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trash bag, and if I do,
I promise you, I will not do it
In a...

Green Apples

In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
To the back porch
And slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
Telling me something:...

Ashes Among the Remains


My father responded
Just throw them away
I did not nor did I cast them into
ocean or bay where we’d fished
flounder and fluke nor strew them
over the golf courses...

What We Packed at 3 A.M.



The dog

the drugs


The cash

The Cure At Troy


Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

If, On Account Of The Political Situation




If, on account of the political situation,


there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and men

A Woman Speaks


Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the...

Waking


Get up from your bed,
go out from your house,
follow the path you know so well,
so well that you now see nothing
and hear nothing
unless something can cry loudly to you ,
and for...

Initiation Song from the Finders' Lodge


Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes....

Ode to the Joyful Ones




Shield your joyful ones.
—from an Anglican prayer


That they walk, even stumble, among us is reason

San Gregorio Sands


the last sweet drops of the tangerine sun
trickle down, and the surf is tangerine foam
San Gregorio sands are honey and gold
and the fog is waiting till we've gone on home...

How I Discovered Poetry


It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I...

Poetry At The End Of The World


Indigenous peoples do not believe the world is ending.


The world is changing, they say.


Even before the scientists named climate change

When I Am Among The Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would...

For John Lewis


In an age of outrage there is love.
In an age of fear there is love.
In an age of unspeakable grief and loss there is love.


Gratitude remains intact.
But we must act.

Weather


On a scrap of paper in the archive is written

I have forgotten my umbrella. Turns out

in a pandemic everyone, not just the philosopher,

is without. We scramble in the drought of...

Help Me, Love Poem


Help me, love poem, rise up from the broken glass,
The time to sing has come.
Help me, love poem, to reestablish integrity,
And to sing again about pain.


The world...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d8qZwLANbI&feature=youtu.be

Legacies


her grandmother called her from the playground
“yes, ma’am”
“i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want...

The Icelandic Language


In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it....

"next to of course god america i


love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh


say can you see by the dawn's early my


country 'tis of centuries come and go

What We Need Is Here


Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And...

Antilamentation


Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your...

Waiting on the Mayflower


“what, to the american slave, is your 4th of july?”—Frederick Douglass



i. august 1619

arrived in a boat, named