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

Michael, the bronze

 
Bronze relief, 21 x 12 x 1.5  

I decided to go without patina this time and allow the piece to darken naturally. 

Far and Far Again, Alone (from the journal)

Colorless quiet morning after the rain. 

Just at the threshold of hearing,

many crickets.  From all sides—

awareness, selfhood.  8-1-12

Watching someone work is so relaxing.

The yellow and black swallowtail moves

from one rosy sharon to the next.  8-4-12

Whining catbird in the crab apple

doesn’t need an interpreter.

His tail is twitching.  8-6-12

Mourning dove and a thousand

crickets are drowned out by

a handful of cicadas.  8-9-12

Summer’s electricity rolls down in waves. 

Wren sorts out her breast feathers,

adds her own current, staccato,

the little sounds rounded and discrete

in the storms of insect noise.  8-9-12 

It doesn’t come like a river,

it comes in pieces like cricket noise,

parsed with mourning dove,

with space in between long enough

to purple the pokeberries. 

Like the overcast morning it feels whole,

but it’s not.  It’s only what the lasso

brings in one cinch at a time.  8-10-12

Too many leaves in the crab apple

to see him clearly, the big gray hawk the

crows chased in.  8-11-12

Weight is a funny thing.

It turns purple in the fall—

poke purple.  8-15-12

He likes to talk about it,

catbird does—the search for just

the right pokeberry.  8-18-12

Northampton and Bertie Counties, NC

The dead cities one after one.

The dead corn one after one.

The broken houses one after one.

The narrow road going through it all,

long like a gray snake with no eyelids.  8-26-12

The broken flight

resumes—the lake light

points the way.  8-28-12

The ream turns into folded books—

a desk overlooking the sea,

the wide open windows,

three yellow pencils,

a little girl looking off into the tomorrow

that comes today.  8-28-12

The long road has been running since Stockton,

the small motel along the old Burma Shave road.

The fair never remembered—the reason for going.

Only the quiet dark, the long road

and the coming and the going

measured by a small girl in the dark

listening for cars and the wonderful

sound of air, far and far again, alone.  8-29-12

Fat brown cicada, please call

from somewhere farther away.

You hurt our ears.  8-31-12. 

Without me the sea moves.

The last sip of tea

tastes only like tea.  8-31-12.

Something Walked In (from the journal)

The cool morning turned

up to a furnace in the time it takes

to brew a pot of tea.

In the heavy air, the trees move slowly.  7-5-12

The cicadas have found their way

up the trees.  They sing counterpoint

to the crows.  Late summer come early.  7-5-12

A bee in the sharon.

Another bee in another sharon.

Me, watching the pokeberries swell.

It’s a swell morning.  7-10-12

In the noisy morning

dove’s hollow call—

a sphere of solitude

answered now

by a faraway other.  7-11-12

Berries weigh the poke.

The hound weighs the morning.

Heavy heat weighs the air.

A leaf spins on a spider line

in a breath of air the giant dragonfly

just stirred up.  7-16-12

Startling, last night’s rain suddenly falling

out of the myrtle, sounding like something

walking with intent, pushing ahead,

first through the creeper,

then the sassafras,

then through columbine’s dry seed pods,

then to me, turning to see who,

who comes, who leads with awareness

through the thick, damp wood.

Something walked in,

turned the wood poppy leaves

to their autumn color,

gave me a breath, 

a turning breath.  7-16-12

Chickadee flew through the star tree.

She took something along the way—

a glance from wren, from redbird,

from me.  7-18-12

Yesterday’s rain is still falling

in tiny drops that do not hinder

carpenter bee while pink is calling,

the rosy sharons open enough

in the rain.  7-22-12

Sieboldii’s vertical leaves

hold the silver rain,

the quiet jewels spaced evenly

like breath in a slow time.  7-22-12

A warm day.

The air would be cool if it moved.

Cicada moves.  7-24-12

Sharp in the cool morning—

hibiscus shadows,

crow calling.

And then, the soft cicadas.  7-25-12

A hedge of pokeweeds.

Who else has one?

Wren nosedives in.  7-25-12

Yesterday, hickory’s first leaves turned,

startling one in the dark room, drawing.

The sudden autumn gold cast vibrations

across the thin tracing paper as thin

and as blue as the face of time, turning,

folding summer down.  7-29-12

Catbird has taken the first purple

pokeberries.  The empty pink stalks

stretch upright like flowers.  7-31-12