November’s Songs

There are few heard

in this bare and silent month

after all the leaves have fallen,

but the nests become visible,

all those homes of summer

we could barely imagine

when hidden by July’s green,

where miracles took place

we have not yet encountered,

magic we will not know

until the grace of spring,

when all those miracles

unwitnessed in the year past

will begin to sing.

Four Short Poems

1.  Advice from an Old Poet

Diminish Marx,

Darwin and Freud,

and let your heart

stray from the void.

Admit the truth

of want and strife.

Honor the craft:

celebrate life!

2.  Eight Big Colors

Green draws the frame of April days,

and purple shades an iris chin.

Yellow we use for loving rays,

and black is our color for sin.

Orange twists itself through sunset skies,

and brown is how summer departs.

Blue sets the depths of someone’s eyes,

and red pumps the hope through our hearts.

Mea Culpa

My sins of commission

I can easily repent:

at least I took action,

whatever its intent.

But sins of omission,

never leaving the blocks,

are conditions that make

wide-awake two o’clocks.

4.  The Yews

On a dark day in a cold place,

your green was a welcome glimmer,

a flight from the grasp of winter

into the breadth of summer days;

into its lively contentions,

the careless coming and going,

the luxury of nature growing

beyond expected dimensions.

Early December at the Arboretum

November was a long month,

from garden’s last breath

before the killing frost

to now, when nearly all is dead.

As I walk along the beds,

now darkened in somber browns,

save the cheerful artifice

of winter pansies and kale

or late ferns clinging to green,

even their duration is doubtful

with the prospects of January.

I still remember a July

when there were pinks, blues,

yellows and even birds singing

tunes of their eternal pursuits,

melodies meant to seal a future;

and I remind myself that winter

is not years, but months and days--

perhaps briefer than the leaves;

and these thoughts are the streams--

as bright as the sun above--

which will move and lift our feet

until they reach the next spring.

November 11, 2016

I am outside, walking with my dog,

both of us a little slower now

as we move through the new dark

of this mid-autumn evening,

and there is a super moon

( or so we have been told

by all the learned astronomers),

the brightest mankind has seen

since 1948-- auspicious indeed.

In that year my brother came forth

and my father was soon departed,

off to find new ventures up north,

starting a three year separation.

Thus, I am sure it is meaningful,

but Maisie is not so certain,

still earth bound is Ashe

with all her doggy concerns,

the smells that assure her

she is somewhere near home,

and not a bad place to be.

While I muse of heaven and forever,

and search for links to the past,

she reminds me that this soil

is where we are consigned,

of the need to find our path

through the maze of each day--

in this lovely breathing now.  

Devotions

(Read at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship November 20, 2016)

I can’t subscribe to piety,

but perhaps I will be devout,

though I won’t be too specific

about where I direct it.  To be aware

rather than observant is my direction:

sure of the love bestowed on me,

bathed in gratitude every morning,

but less certain of allegiances;

much as in listening to Bach

I am assured of majesty

and confident of eternity

without trying to be exact;

though on some nights I am happy

to defer to the last few crickets

in their song outside my window,

defying the days which must come,

or to a moon so large and bright

that eyes almost conceive a corona;

and so it goes on, this gift

I scarcely deserve,

this wonder that needs no name.

November 2, 2014: All Souls Day

Sunday morning, sitting in my pew,

the trees where I watched

the waltz of the leaves in August

were now bare under gray skies.

How fitting for All Souls Day,

a day we oddly celebrate

the voids in our lives,

those dears we cannot replace.

I thought of great souls and ordinary,

the people who fixed our lunches,

and others whose burden

was to alter the times we inhabit;

all now become our honored dead,

the people who made us possible,

those who left us this place

that we can call home.

As we sang the last hymn

the clouds began to scatter,

the sky found its opening,

let the light fall in shafts,

and the world moved on.

No Regrets Need Apply

I shall not bother with regrets.

It’s all hypothesis,

and there is no evidence,

no clear path from A to B.

I might have been a historian,

fingers dusty with old documents;

or, as my father wished,

a lawyer, parsing the points

of cases full of rights and wrongs;

but instead, near the end of life

I am finishing up as a poet,

full of concerns for the past

that I negotiate with scant data;

arguing the elements

of what is good and true

without the benefit of statutes;

but living in a world of asters

and flocks of blackbirds massing

in the light of a changing season;

and my fate seems satisfactory,

much more than merely acceptable.

My Vocation

So many poets write of pain,

of day brimming with troubled thoughts,

and I can’t.  I have been spared,

lived a life mostly full of grace,

or at least when difficult

it was something I managed,

or imagined that I was managing.

I was at at peace-- and even better--

with my parents as they slipped away,

have no quarrels with my brother,

still live with my wife,

and a miracle-- talk to my children.

The intimations of mortality

have presented themselves, as they will;

a folly to deny-- and yet--

they are still in the wings,

seemingly not ready for their cue,

and so it must be my duty

to tell the other story,

to wake and witness wonder,

to sing and shout thanks,

and that is what I propose

as long as pencil finds paper.

August 8, 2016: A Story, However Unlikely

Tonight all I want is celebration

and my only dilemma

is where to start this ode:

perhaps Brahms or a waxing crescent,

but both are too common,

though in no way unimportant.

Availability is not a flaw,

for were it so, I would dismiss

both my flowers and the finches,

sins I could not be pardoned.

Tonight, though, I shall sing the rare,

a tale of two improbable people,

a contradiction in their geographies,

their meeting a pure accident

of a concert, a cathedral and a cat,

aided by an unwitting matchmaker.

making the miracle of Minnesota

joined to distant County Clare.

It became an encounter of light,

a glimmer of days they both saw,

which organized them not to wander,

but to firmly claim that ground

where some hope, hardly named,

persuaded them to go on

until they fell upon the joy

which might color two lives--

that wisely, they chose not to shun

Every Morning

Every morning I am glad to wake

to the light through the slats,

the gift of sun still there,

that great friend in the heavens

bringing warmth to the dawning.

It’s time to stand up and see,

to shake off the stiffness of night,

to lift my dog from the bed,

time to start coffee and go outside,

gather the paper and look at the mountains;

to welcome the grace of more hours

when perhaps nothing will happen,

though we might be blessed,

tumble into some new scent or flower,

find something that penetrates

to such a living depth inside

that we would never want to forget;

both of us happy and grateful

for another day on our planet.

Among My Peers

We are all one misstep

removed from disaster:

either by diagnosis or accident,

a fact we soberly accept

as the truth of our age.

Dreams from years long ago

have not come to pass,

whether private or public:

we are resigned to a present

imperfect and unpromising,

but find no reason to surrender,

no excuse not to hope.

We await each dawn,

happy to be alive,

to be full of thoughts

in these still lovely days

which color our moments,

to find the words we must say;

and to watch the children

who run, laughing through days,

who will people a future

which we may not see,

but already welcome

as if we were there.