Fairy rings

Sweetgrass smudge
circle perched
on Eagle's brow
Sun descends
Left to right
as does the song.
Drum taut
loose assembly
distant eyes across the space
walkers pace the earthwork top.
Rings beyond circuits outside of circle
echo down to this group,
the latest splash in an ancient pond.
Before them all, and new as spring
rings of darker, higher grass
dot the lawn around.
Inside one, a girl sits
talking to a distant friend
on a cell phone
(another circumference
of influence).

Judging

TV kitchens do not spatter
TV kitchens have no mess
Usual images with no problems
Makes reality feel the less.
When I fry the stove gets greasy
Baking leaves flour everywhere
No artistic smudge on cheekbone
But a dusting from sink to chair.
If my cooking is seen as measured
By the standard ads would give
It's all ugly, messy, nasty
Regrettably like how we live.

If an island

If an island
left aside
in immensity may hide
where lights now dark
once flared and swept
the darkness left unstayed
and kept
where eyeless ships now
navigate assured
heedless of rocks once allured;
then on that spot intrudes
above the waves
beyond what saves
the crews who worry not
as watching channels
left obscured
while hoping for some play adjured
worth watching on this adult pen.
Men young & old, no gals
still haul the ropes and watch the porn
while fearing any coming storm
as much as did the sailors when
1890s left higher hems,
a mission trip still hope attends.

Weary

Another sad slump sags
settled into sorrow
salted with surly snarls.

Bring some hope, a bottle
or rattled tumblers
a trayfull of scope

amber fluid to see
as if through a lens
the bitter screens of hope.

Hopes may come, may show
but most may go
and sift the likelihood of growth.

Toothwort, lousewort, orchids in the mud

Toothwort, lousewort, orchids in the mud;
salamanders, beaver dams, backing up the flood.
Caddis flies, red spotted newt, all asquish to see,
with speckled alder overhead, a magic-making tree.

Roll the stone away

Bible lands and holy names
they tell us ancient tales,
of walking through the desert
on newly journeyed trails;
Looking for deep wells where
the dry can drink and live,
the holes are blocked with boulders
no access do they give.
Keeping out a wand'rer,
a raider or a knave,
it takes more than just one man
to move the stone and save --

I cannot roll the stone
cannot put behind me
all the weight and load
it tries to keep inside me
Jacob made it move,
opened up the way,
living water flowed
when Jesus rolled the stone, away.

Moses marked the Jordan
with a pile of stone,
one for every tribe which
in slavery did groan;
as they crossed the river,
they raised up where they knew
God's power had removed them
to where their lives were new --

I cannot roll the stone
cannot put behind me
all the weight and load
it tries to keep inside me
Jacob made it move,
opened up the way,
living water flowed
when Jesus rolled the stone, away.

Now I approach the well
myself am weak and weary
yet something holds me back,
a rock marked "I'm unworthy";
A barrier titanic,
a block to knock me down,
until i turn around and
that massive stone is gone --

I cannot roll the stone
cannot put behind me
all the weight and load
it tries to keep inside me
Jacob made it move,
opened up the way,
living water flowed
when Jesus rolled the stone, away.

Haunted city

Ghosts are speaking softly
as they walk past my routine
Shuffling and spitting
acting like they can't be seen
They go to other places
that my travels do not find
Lost in all the people
with their paychecks countersigned.

Their worn and weary countenance
so rarely sees the sun
Jobs they loved are in their past
as well as all their fun
For happiness in moments
they go buy it in the back
some legal mostly not they know
so well what all they lack.

How to find the good news
that they all deserve to hear?
Proclaimed and preached and served up
but still seeming less than near.
Hopeless walkers, shabby seekers
tread the streets bereft of joy:
A day or hour of ease is all
they want 'til sleep's employ.

A better job than three they have
and work that's there's to do
is mission-goal enough for them
the message that gets through.
If they can find a way to live
in light, with love, no fear,
then standing in that listening place
Good News they'd truly hear.

March 2012

Snowdrops without snow
crocus spears full green
daffodils nudge upwards
buds nubble branches
wild onion clumps
lawns hint growth
hens-and-chicks glow with new life.
Frost is fading, not gone.
What will first die
of all this new life,
before spring is full-grown?

Long lost

Looking back
and far away,
he turns to sweep again.

The dust ahead
a scattered spray
about to redeploy.

There's a spot
not yet in play
where scoops and pans will lift

sending off
without delay
unwanted debris to dump.

Not even

Lines
Votes
Folks
Views
Polls
Cards
Whirs
Exits.

Later:
Results?

Heading for the car wash

Softly grimed across the window
salt spray from humming tires
grit spread state-sponsored
sifted off the spoil of coal-fired
power plants and cement slabs.
Mess and hiss and grey
wiped widely away washed windshield
an opening in a shroud
perched on wheels.
Layers you want to avoid brushing
up against, but patterns that draw the eye
in a feathered, streamlined, arcing
race from hood to taillights.
Each car, until washed, wears a story
of how far, how fast, how long.
Then a fresh start, a sunny day, and don't forget
to ask for a coat of wax.

Alexander's hair

Hat hair, we call it,
lacking all respect.
The forelocks of our forefathers
have a certain upright air.
None so proud, so prominent
as Alexander Campbell's.
In every view, first painted young,
then engraved yet strong,
let alone the elderly photographs,
he has a shock of hair
that always is making a statement.
It says to me he rode, he hiked, he traveled,
he melted miles and paused to preach.
The trip from hitching post to pulpit
was often direct, without detour,
and mirrors rare enough,
infrequent as pipe organs on the frontier.
Necessity became a tradition,
practice made a sort of perfect display,
an exclamation point
to punctuate his sterling, sharply-framed
sermons, speaking of the sword
that had two-edges, but did not
find use in cutting hair, no more
than would Samson himself.
More Jacksonian than Jackson,
as Old Testament-y as Amos,
the New Testament a twinkle deep in his eyes,
but Acts the blueprint that caught his gaze.
He laid down one last time,
singing hymns with family, beard
and hair spread upon the pillow
as the children & soon-to-be widow
wept, and held in memory
what they would one day write.
Dead, gone, this March 4,
they called a sculptor to take a last
impression.
It missed one thing:
the wet plaster of the death-mask
smoothed his hair against the skull,
no longer alive and emphatic.
At the last, his hair laid down.

Ahab's ghost

Beached far inland
ribs turned awry
ivory replaced by rust
skin by tin
and broken windows.
Steel mills left cold,
fires plunged into lost seas
(or at least great lakes).
River bottoms scattered
with carcasses, bones
of truss and failed frame.
The species not extinct,
but the survivors
are small & swift.

Return of the Hunters

Frozen water-wheel,
icy horizon,
numb-footed hunters disconsolate,
glum.
Their tread is heavy
in Breugel's chosen moment,
even the dogs droop.
Winter's hold is hard,
yet birds still fly.
Skaters spin their hopes
of spring into the surface
of the ice. Whorls
and curlicues
and vortexes, fling
everyone from one season
into another, tornadoes
and thunderstorms waiting
to make us fondly recall
the still certainties of snow.

Strider to the west

Crescent moon tangled in a buck's antlers
(some say a bull's horns)
chasing gems along the jeweled ecliptic.
An outline in stars, cap in red
walks above my front drive,
his more indistinct dog behind
(but with a brilliant license tag a-dangle).
Osiris, Orion, Finn, Nanabozho,
the names vary but the recognition
is always the same. A leader,
a lightbringer, a hunter, a savior.
Mithras he was once,
born out of a cave,
bringer of peace
(although with a sword).
Three-starred belt, sword or hammer at hand,
legs striding across the sky,
arms uplifted to sling or strike.
You can read much into this tableau,
but not just anything you like.

Worn

Memories made threadbare
with repeated handling;
some from fond recollection
and others dwelt in like haunted homes.
Bones and rags
polished and cherished
as a shrine to loss;
others bright shiny stones
carried as talismans of places
and days long past.
You can't wear out a memory,
but you can reshape it.
Like a rock in your pocket
whose outline is the same in
every measurable dimension
but where reason assures
that you have left traces,
the friction of time and tension
whispering off bits here and there.
You don't think it has changed,
but you know it has.
Painful or joyous, you know the past
made mindful
has a way of taking trifles
and turning them into monuments.

Birds beyond the twilight

Mercury nods, dipping low
Venus burns out for show
Jupiter gleams with moons alight
Crescent moon atop the sight.

Still, they seem, but edging west
seeking that horizon's rest.
Turning to the north, around,
we see a star in flight, no sound.

The Space Station makes its way
from left to right, it does not stay
in place but orbits, flung across space,
advances through the sycamore branches.

How many

How many times
How many ways
How many hopes
How many days

How many trials
How many ends
How many enemies
How many friends

How many starts
How many smiles
How many parts
How many miles.

Rose of Sharon needs milk

Five cents a basket won't do.
The fan belt, shredded, is through.
Cops with pick handles go where they will.
No one in the house can eat their fill.

Hope is somewhere on down the road.
The road, itself, is not a friend of Joad.
He's got to make a truce and walk along.
His only saving grace is being strong.

What is the way for those who are just weak?
Those whose radiators always leak,
Who cannot pick the quota though they try,
And find no sympathy each time they cry?

Those are the ones who seek a place.
Just a spot, a shaded seat where they find grace.
Weak or strong, the road is cruel.
On the move you can't trust any rule.

The rambling way is freedom of a sort,
But only from, not freedom for.
We listen to the gossip for report
Where profit from our labor is secure.

Mouldering in the air

John Brown, bitter-hued
beard rippling
battering at presumption
overriding all reason.

Leaving out each answer
hurling bloody questions
firing drama and denunciation
at all comers, in every season.

A stand once taken
not to be retreated
from or further into.
His barricades no pose, no position.

A low over the Great Lakes

You might just call it ordinary
watching clouds scud by the hills;
the dark's own fav'rite adversary,
sunrise the east sky fills.

What makes it strange a simple show
many may not have detected.
From south to north they stately go,
reverse of what's expected.

We're used to what we take as source
of how life should go our way
where things divert the normal course
until always is this day.

One and another

There was just something about it,
the Lunar Module, true spacecraft.
Made to fly in vacuum only,
a safe harbor, metallic life raft,
never feeling the air across her hull.
A truly unique creation,
Grumman-built, NASA planned,
exceptional transportation.
Drawn and built, paper & glue,
a thing of unearthly lines;
Every angle I knew by heart,
inside the cockpit from controls to signs.
So it was a silly but understandable thing
when a decade later at Scout camp,
my first canoe, aluminum-hulled
bore the unmistakable Grumman stamp,
and it pleased me beyond reason
to paddle across the lake, day or night
in a cousin of the Lunar Module,
gliding in my own unearthly flight.

Another decade further on
it was my transport with another.
Crossing every dawn, returning in the dark,
newly married, not quartered with the others.
We two, still strangers though knowing much
of each, working as staffers, together living,
our first summer together mostly apart:
except for those paddles each evening.
On cloudless nights, we'd pause halfway;
five hundred yards to either shore,
a hundred feet to unfelt lakebed below,
above the stars, the moon, and more.
We'd watch the Milky Way echo our path
and the stars too numerous for number,
infinity doubled in the still surface surrounding,
a moment more restful than all our slumber.
A Grumman vessel carried us, with caution
and good judgment taking us to the other side.
Unearthly, but heavenly, the journey ends
until our spacecraft takes us on another ride.

Another Lent

Days of ashes, or of mulch.
Leaf-litter sticking to my feet,
snow even a faint memory
of purity lost and sodden soil.

There are green shoots,
there is increasing light,
but the reality of it is not convincing.

I believe in the ashes
and the dust
and the possibility of repentance.

If not for myself,
at least for others.
Together, we go forward
to receive a mark that brushes off
before we even get home.

Later than night, I find a stray bit
scrawling an exclamation point down my collar.
It will take some scrubbing to get out.