First Snow

At last it comes
the soft benison
of first snowfall.
I turn off the lights
and watch its descent
through the cone
of the imperturbable street light.

Two days from now
we'll be grumping
about cold toes
and slushy streets.
But just for now
the miracle is new again.

Muse

These are the moments I prize
when I awake
into the crucible of night
silvered by pregnant moon
expectant
and muse whispers
from the wisps of dew,
with a faint smell
of wind and honeysuckle
in she steals
dripping stars and myth
reminding me of visions
I don't remember
and as though rising
from the depths
of an inner sea
the words come

Everycat

Nutmeg is my everycat.
Tiger eyes, luminescent green
        in tall night grass;
Proud lioness, leaving her mouse-prey present
        on the door sill;
Cheetah, in the kitchen, chasing
        popcorn across the linoleum veldt;
Panther, in the dark bedroom,
        stalking the billowing moonlit curtain;
Cougar, on the mantle, waiting for
        a yarnball to make its move;
Leopard-still, behind the shower curtain,
        awaiting my unsuspecting faucet-hand;
Housecat, curled contentedly,
        purring in my lap.
Nutmeg is my everycat.

Pioneer's Lament

  You were a lover of woods
And I was a lover of streams
Together we hiked through wilderness
And dreamed a thousand dreams.
In each and every fir tree
We saw a dream anew;
Climbing upwards to the sky
Daring to come true!
Now the trees have fallen
Most pulled down by men.
Finding different purpose
Than what we thought of then.
Ah — dreams have changed a lot dear,
From those we dared to dream. . . . . .
When you were a lover of woods
And I was a lover of streams.

Green Memories

Once on the mountains the fir trees all stood,
Lofty and straight in their forest-green hoods.
Sighing their windsong. shading the ground,
With splendid green boughs the ridges they crowned.
Vistas of green, then blue and then gray;
Timbered hills marching away, away.

This was the schoolhouse, and there the store.
And that was the church with the double door.
There was the pond and the lumber mill,
That smelled like the fir trees up on the hill.
And there's the old smithy and ironworks,
Where my father toiled as accounting clerk.

Down on the river was our old house;
The chimney's still there, and the cool boathouse.
The scar on the lawn is where the dike stood,
The year the spring rains brought down the big flood.
We'd watch the spiked dancers float by every day,
Herding the logs to the mill for their pay.

The river flowed on all covered with wood;
A highway of lumber for big cities' good.
We lived by the whistle that blew at the mill,
Bouncing its discipline off of the hill.
Eating the sawdust, smelling the smoke,
Growing up tall by the steam engine's stroke.

Until one hot summer, the mountains were bare,
The landscape was wretched, in naked despair.
The yarders came down, the saws stopped their song,
The whistles stopped blowing—the silences long.
No need for the smithy, or bright blow torch,
And Father came home to sit on the porch.

The mountains are mud now—the wide river brown.
The land letting go as the rain melts it down.
Except for the stumps hiding there in the brush,
No evidence here of a forest once lush.
And no signs of the livelihood, stronger than trees,
That sucked all the life from my green memories.

A Cloud Ate the Moon

A cloud ate the moon one stormy night,
In greedy, gobbling, gulping bites.
The moon looked down in sad dismay
As bits of light were gnawed away.
Then just an edge was left behind,
Curved like a piece of melon rind.
At last that too was lost from sight,
And moonlit sky was darkest night.
The cloud stretched out, all corpulent,
And rudely growled, in gorged content.

Anthropomorphic

One leaf still hangs
from all that grew,
on the giant oak
by the pasture slough.
In spite of rain
and wind that blows;
in spite of several seasonal snows,
(no vestige left
of its greener state—
not willing to concede
to tradition or fate,)
it insists its place
is on the tree,
and won't accept
the downward fall
and dust's obscurity.
Its former role
of one of many,
is changed to lonesome
singularity.
A parallel
is there to find
in this one leaf
so disinclined;
holding on
with a mortal bent
to a circumstance
of known content.
One human heart
in a glimpse so brief,
likes finding spirit
in a leaf.

The Farm

Early in the morning, the dew out still,
the blackberry patch up on the hill.
Memories of cobblers, pies and jams;
recipes handed down from my Gram.
Bees drone slowly, drunk on juice,
pond water trickles over the sluice.
Mist hangs lazily under the trees,
dandelion fluff floats by on the breeze.
Crows out calling—insistent caws,
night pulls back from the hilly draws.
Farmhouse white as winter snows,
against the verdant fir tree rows.
Cows moo lowly from the stone barn,
Vermont summer morning, Grandpa's farm.

My mind runs back over fifty years,
work and laughter and sometimes tears.
Various cousins came with me,
to spend the summers in hill country.
Up from the cities, away from harm,
we came to stay on the mountain farm.

The daily chores were often hard,
before sun-up in the darkened yard.
But working together we got them done,
and discovered sharing made work fun.
As sunlight traveled across the land
we grew towards adulthood, strong and tanned.

Old Frank Linzer was the hired man,
helped Grandpa with only one hand.
Lost the other in World War One,
never would say how it was done.
Only that governments had their illusions,
and young men's limbs were the contributions.
Other than that he spoke with his eyes,
a wink from him was a sought-after prize.

The neat farmhouse was Gram's domain
the garden too, when it didn't rain.
Cleaning and washing, and keeping us fed,
she was often the very last to bed.
Up first in the morning, wash on the line,
She woke us with breakfast, enough for nine.
Always a touch as we went on out,
each of us special, never a doubt.

Wood in the woodshed, coffee on the stove,
Aunt Lucy ironing the fabric she wove.
Supported her family with this skill,
weaving cloth for the Burlington mills.
Raised six kids on the money she earned,
made fresh baked bread, and butter, home churned.
Summers she sold the wild strawberries,
swore to her death they were grown by fairies.

Uncle Bill whittling, talking to the birds,
telling me stories with magical words.
He knew every animal tree and leaf,
his teaching enriched me beyond belief.
Took his life finally, with a gun,
when old age signaled his life was done.
Said old men had the right to choose,
when their life's value was all used.
He seemed to know when the hour was right,
slipped away from us all one winter night.
Walking now, in the wooded hills,
his voice remains, I can hear it still.

Growing from a child, some memories fade,
but not the ones on the farm I made.
They come back clear as the nighttime sky,
that I'll see in my mind until I die.

On Looking at the Passing Comet

This is the way our lives must end

the soft sound of the night-jar
wooing the darkness to stay

the fireflies dancing
beneath the beckoning moon
lighting the path to love
beyond our bodies
with silver and forgiveness

stars becoming sustenance
filling our tired spirits
with luminescence

lifting us

to the soft stream of knowing
that goes on forever
in silence
in radiance

Snowgeese

Tintype morning
goldwashed sky
beyond sepia trees
from bay
and weeds of novembered fields
they rise
snowflakes going back to sky
honking lines
in eddying rivulets
filling sky and heart
with voices a thousand strong
saying
time is now to act on intent
no matter distance
or risk

fly