How you might slip into this light
Lured from bedtime curfews,
Signatory of winter,
With it’s wet ink faded into those days,
Remembered now in the tender branches
Still sliding through the wind.
.
Ever freshening days,
Alive,
With new things illumed,
In this one last moment
Before it all pulls us in
Returning us, gently,
Into the rhythm of our souls.
How might I count the days?
.
By the sounds of rain
On a field at night?
.
Or should I tally mornings
Of fickle, teasing light,
On the edges of storms?
.
Could it be the screeching egret,
High overhead in dark skies,
Framing chilling air into promises
Of frosty tinkerings.
.
How might I add these days?
Where a single leaf,
Bright star fluttering,
Shuffles to rest,
To dream in the soft cradle of spring.
My sweet river
Where have you gone?
.
I knew you
Of bygone places
Wrapped in icy mornings
Beyond time.
.
Sweet songs of your seasons
Passing stories
Like childrens secrets,
Magical and suprising,
Refreshingly indifferent.
.
That was us.
.
Among your soft curves,
bantering about,
Often silenced in reveries,
While whispers passed across
Your eyes
Sparkling of emerald dreams.
.
Not you,
Not me,
But this.
.
Different now
In a sadness.
Lost
In the bony grip
of a relentless routine
Unrehearsed
And unwelcome.
There.
.
Heat furrowing sweet spaces:
Shadowy reminds,
Of yesterday missed,
Amidst the cruel promises of
Incessant tomorrows.
The daily rhythm now:
Broken,
Pulsing softly.
.
None of this can be undone.
How the light catches this corner of the kitchen now.
Some effusive glow that might have left us spellbound
And captive to a late afternoon pause.
But that corner hides dust and crumbs
Winters droppings and excuses and dark things.
.
This time there will be no pagan contemplation
Of this full circle before us.
No, this light pulls us away from the long dark
Where we lived maybe close within ourselves,
Intimate
In a way that accumulated warmth and a dim light can do,
Pulling you in while tempting you out
In short fidgety bouts.
.
Now, with almost forgotten suddenness,
Light piles through the window
Like the first time
When it pulled us out there.
A long ways from there.
.
And once out that door,
A long ways from here.
Convinced there were ghosts out there.
.
The long fetch up the hill:
Landscapes of new Spring grass
Flailing and moving.
Ever with the hard line of something
Hidden just over the hill
Waiting to knock at that broad, dark door.
I remember tracing
Across the pale silvery worlds
Of sharpened sounds
Lit by January moons.
.
Curse you,
Impatient rain,
And how you fidget!
.
Casting this land
Into a great serpentine lapse,
Of water and light
With everything sparkling
On a mid-winter’s night.
I cannot counter the edge,
Remarkable, memorable, inexorable
In an odd persistence that wanes in it’s coming.
I cannot shape this space.
Green years, short months and how the day suddenly curves away.
The center is far removed from place and time. Eyes turning to the bright prospects of hard lines on skies.
I cannot yield to grace, as the soft illusions of ease tempt me into the chilled waters.
Your Hands:
Coaxing stories from clouds and rocks
And other things.
Tales gliding along the contours
Of a barely wavering joy.
.
If I could pilfer your burdens,
And somehow build trees:
Respite from the sudden monopolies of Spring.
Here,
Moored
By the soft calling turns
Of a river now purposed by rain,
We can linger in that patient lapse
Between the miseries of drought
And the sudden electricity of flood.
.
The Copenhagen-spitting sages of Weymouth,
And the oared helmsmen at High Rock,
Hiding in their closet cigarettes,
Share chit chat smiles of angst
In the nervous dawn light
While the Chinook-crazed bankies
Debate spoon and roe.
.
And a distant figure
Heaves arcing bright lines
Through shadowy secret boils
And long greasy slicks
In a solitary reverie
Of far-fetched feathered hopes.
.
This is far removed
From the life-gone-easy days of,
say, June,
The routines of August,
Or the Sunday light
After a passing April rain
Reminded us all things
Eventually come back to this time.
Amazing how a river can hold up
An entire town with its soft calling turns,
In those patient lapses between
The long miseries of drought
and the hasty electricity of flood.
.
This town,
Anonymous lines,
Maps of hope and glee
All folded into once brightly colored boxes.
Now, the intricate creases of lives unwound,
Pressed by the tales of neighbors
On a winter night suddenly come early
And sharpened by rain
At the far side of a dead end court.
.
The long river, now purposed by rain,
Flows through my hands,
Fingers touching current,
Holding it like a breath.
.
The sound of water is everywhere.
Shaken Rain 