Winter Solstice Eve

The ox falls, his ransom showers the snow.

Ice drips the rhythm of Gaia’s lullaby.

The shawl of the winter priest crackles and snaps

as the scent of pine rises from the bonfire.

This is the fire dance of turning time

blessed by the moon and the raven’s gift.

The winter wren sings his love song

for the golden apple of the sun.

The head of Divine Child glows

with the light of two thousand suns.

Address A.P.O.

As my son and nephews

and now my grandsons, grow tall,

I remember

that my Father went to war,

my Uncles went to war,

my cousins and classmates went to war.

My Father came back

with scars on his dreams,

my Uncle returned

with scars on his back,

my classmates were

carrried home with

scars on their coffins.

The street by the capitol

is closed now,

it is the site for the new

war memorial

and again,

I fold myself

like an envelope

to be carried in the pocket

of a young man's uniform.

Their First Love Story - Pyramus and Thisbe

There is the sun and slight morning chill;

There are the mulberries outside the window

ripening, without instruction;

White, green, palest pink, a certain sort-of orange

moving toward red and their

soon-to-be lush darkness.

There are the mocking birds and blue jays

eager among the branches

their choral delights fill the open window,

praise from the uncoached throat;

The silk of ordinary miracles spins.

There is the sun and a slight morning chill.

April Triolet

Oh New April

Oh, new April, you have arrived!

Yet winter often dusts your gentle stride.

Still, fields shout green and buttercups preside.

Oh, new April, you have arrived!

Your sun flirts warmth, becomes our early bride

From cold and ice we are revived.

Oh, new April, you have arrived!

Yet winter often dusts your gentle stride.

Have a new poem "working on me" -

The Road Into Morning

Think of Friday night at 11:53,

how you wish to sleep with the windows open;

while streetlights amble into the shadowless room

and a patchwork quilt, white at noon, rests luminous,

the palest shade of green you can almost name.

Think of an acoustic guitar ninety miles away

as a new melody cascades, timbre by timbre

from taught steel strings and late-night fingers.

Think how, for over forty years that tune as played

inside of you, how it craves a new delineation.

Think of a younger lover, years ago,

who called your name in sleep;

how that naming ricochets now against new cut grass,

the ozone of gentle rain, as both rise up and in

a second-story window to tease your sleeplessness.

Think of the western plains,

where hides beat fifteen hundred miles away,

the gourd dancer, ready to go, ready to die.

How maybe you’ll be there in eleven days;

every inhale, every exhale, red and alive.

Think of poetry as it pulses, the pull of its undertow,

how the color of each word reverberates

and sings a thrumming solo through your veins.

Think how this is the road into morning and night,

into yourself, into everything that wishes voice.

Assignment - write a poem about 3 am - also write a poem containing only 25 words. I combined them both and here's the resulting poem. Comments apprecited.

1997

It is three days

past the July new moon.

At 3 A.M.,

my Father,

four hours dead,

steps into my room

and says goodbye.

River of Stones 01 January 2012

A chevron of geese cross the Appalachian sky and call a in January morning.  Twenty years ago I’d have to have been Minnesota, not my front yard, to see this.