Spirit Bubble

 Lithograph, hand-colored with watercolor, 5 x 5"

A Lost Bit of Wind (from the journal)

The skinny deer

ate catbird’s pokeberries,

the ones she could reach.  9-4-12

Pear’s first rusty leaves

move like wands.  Will they conjure

crisp days?  9-4-12

Metallic trips, trills

in the poke,

in the crab apple. 

It’s wren speaking Carolina.  9-5-12

The last wood poppies

melt into the dry ground

as golden as their spring blossoms.  9-5-12

Falling through the gray day

hickory’s orange

teardrops.  9-6-12

Quiet now,

the cinnamon wren.

Her friends speak for her.  9-10-12

In the woods,

in the one spot of sun,

redbird hunkers down

on the crab apple branch,

warming.  9-10-12

A cold morning

without sound.

The crickets have slept in.   9-11-12

The old sadness is still sad.

A drop of blood on paper.

The dust, the dry dust.  9-11-12

From the depths of the shiny pokeberries,

the soft voice of catbird

lost in thought.  9-12-12

The ant on the black rim

of the glass table suddenly stands up,

listens for a heartbeat, changes direction.

Falling acorns.  9-12-12

As dark as dusk

catbird rests on the purple poke.

A single word.  9-13-12

From deer’s pathway

the honeysuckle leaves wave.

A lost bit of wind.  9-17-12

Shiny in the rain

the dance of colors—

yellow spicebush,

red pear,

purple dogwood.

Green waves goodbye.  9-18-12

Calendar Rose

The long road to the old city

to sort prints,

gaze at the river,

eat broccoli soup with

an old friend,

stacking towers

of the flower

of many roses.  9-19-12

Even the tiny grasshoppers

in their first instar

tingle the morning.  9-22-12

A small hole

in the woods left by leaf fall.

The season of light is beginning.  9-24-12

Coming outside,

the periphery of senses expands

to the horizon.  Wren speaks.

Catbird peeks from the honeysuckle,

eye to eye with me,

center to center.  9-26-12

Our walk up from Terraset

we step over the fallen wild persimmons,

translucent dark yellow globes, the

broken ones smelling like autumn.  9-26-12

Against poke’s maroon shanks,

the graceful leaves lighten

and yellow.  9-27-2

In the cold morning

the wood is measurably

yellower.  9-29-12

Self-determination in a stick bug.

He would not be moved out of the

path of the school bus, except by his

own six legs.  9-29-12