Two canoes

These two canoes
are resting now,
beside still waters' edge.
Been paddling a while,
and now, as evening nears,
we draw them up
onto the rocks,
climb out, and watch
the sun sink slowly
into the cleft of the mountain.
Plenty of time tomorrow
for more adventures...

Winter, looming

This path of black is not
a path I would have chosen:
these white flowers, though charming
hint of winter snows to come.
All the Queen Anne's Lace
this narrow spit of land could hold
can never compensate
for the roses and the poppies, lost;
the purple phlox and daffodils
that spring and summer brought
are gone, and this black path
remains, and pulls me ever closer
to the dark that waits and beckons.
Perhaps I'll pause, and pluck a bit of lace
and tuck it, Spanish-style, behind my ear:
a bright insouciant companion
to help me dance the road ahead.

I wanted to say, Mister

He pauses, this stranger
on my street;
stands at its head
and adjusts his tripod,
training his long lens
across the lagoon,
adjusting the focus
so the glow that is my home,
the mix of light and shadow
where I live,
just past that dock,
is in his sights.


That part of me that thinks it owns the view
that devotes its days to capturing every nuance of this place
cries out, in a small child's voice, Mine! Mine! No!
as if by clicking the shutter he could take it all away.

(I wanted to say, Mister,
this landscape and I have a relationship,
and I've spent hours befriending it,
enticing it into my camera,
sharing it with my friends.)

The wiser woman pauses in her walk,
slows her step and takes a breath;
takes time to feel her feet again,
looks down to ground
and sees the otter and her pup
scurrying across the mudflats,
just below his concentrated vision.

Hurry, I whisper, hurry!
Slither by, and I'll keep walking;
meet you on the other side for tea.
A sip for me, sand dollars for you,
and we'll share a gossipy snicker
about the view he missed...


(with thanks to Mary Oliver,  for her poem, "Winter and the Nuthatch")

Beside the sea of joy

What pleasure
light and color bring;
what joy for eyes,
and yes --
for heart as well,
that surge of wonder
and release,
a wave of delight
that crests, all bubbly
with joy, then breaks
upon the skin
and then subsides
with one long silvery caress...

The fog of unknowing

What if those walls
we build so carefully
between me and not-me;
those fine distinctions
between reality and illusion,
self and reflection,
surface and depth
were all to disappear
in a fog of unknowing?

What if certainty
were left behind
and we stepped out
into her "sprawling darkness
of not knowing,"
(a place of hope, not faith.)


 What if faith --
"so tensile, and so cool,
that has no need of words" --
were more like hope --
"a fighter and a screamer" --
and carried us, not to safety,
but to new understanding,
"where one is less oneself
than a part of some single
indivisible community."

Would this be true:
with all the boundaries gone,
the only thing left to see
would be light?

(All quotes from Mary Oliver, Winter Hours)

Not making sense

How likely would it be, really,
at season's end,
to find one perfect pumpkin
in an empty field;
the most beautiful girl in class,
dateless for the prom;
the plumpest turkey
still gobbling
after Thanksgiving's  come and gone?
What providence is this,
that would consign God's finest
to hang upon a cross?

September first

The dog barks, unexpectedly;
I stumble down the stairs
and am surprised to find
the clocks are claiming
morning should be here by now
but it's still dark:
these latter days of summer,
when light and time
slip by so quickly
must have confused him.
Will I, too -- some year
when I, like the dog,
am old, and almost blind --

awaken September first,
and howl to find the world still dark
when all that is within me knows
there must be light?