Wrapped in the Current

—from Spirit of Wild

Isle of Lewis, Scotland

I have been dreaming seals
 in an ice-edged dawn,
the blue of a nightingale’s flight
scattering into pixie dust.
Wavelets lapping a shingled shore
 urge me toward the sea,
sable eyes peeking above the water’s rim.  
What do they see from the other side,
heads nipping in silence
through half-water, half-sky?

The ocean embraces them, bodies spiraling,
 gliding, curling in a kind of grace.
Whatever follows, whatever their fears
 is not here, in this moment, in this place.
Their whiskers, my hair salt-soaked,
 frost riming my clothes, I breathe the deep.
Even in sleep I am moon-witched
 by the thrusting, tugging tides:
the rumble of the foaming, spraying surf,
 curving under and above, giving birth
to whirlpools and rhythms of bliss
 where seals frolic in tempests
and sing in my dreams.

Darkness Comes Alive

—from Spirit of Wild

A rain of starlings in winter’s longest night –
a negative of white and black,
  breathing shadows inked by shadows.
  Faint flecks echo, reflect
  obsidian sky glossed with stars.

Skimming sable woods, each sooty
wing
  flicks, whisks the snow,
ebony clouds changing shapes
whispering –
whether it be hard as onyx or
soft as pitch –
but rising, always rising, again.

Memory of Moss

—from Spirit of Wild

Moss and fern, Raasay, Scotland

Cushion and Broom: you are what we see, 
no explanation needed for your name, your charm;
Fountain moss: oh lover of streams and ponds but reluctant
 to trust the flow, clutching root and rock;
Carpet: like so many dense mats draped across the woody
 floor, plucked to stuff comforters, folk tales certain you
 give the gift of sleep;
Apple: with your russet shoots, you blossom bony hillsides;
Fringe: with a fondness for rocks and stone walls, you grip
 the edges of roofs and streams, always at the margins –
 the outlier;
Granite moss: softening colder climes, green against the
 slate, the ever-falling leaves;
Feather: with your quills; Hair-cap flowering green
 fireworks;
Bog moss: with sprays like threads, a single bud blushing
the field;
Star: as numerous as your namesake, as steady and
 stalwart, ready to handle anything, grow anywhere;
Elfin-gold and Luminous, you gloss cave walls,
 gleam in fissures and hollows, cradled in roots, light
 hidden
                  but burning still.

Blown Like Seed

—from Spirit of Wild

Look for me under your boot soles says Whitman;
but my bones will long be dust –
blown and settled, settled and blown
before the wren sings her brood to dream.
And if my dust slips through butternut forests
on the paw pad of a lynx, what atoms remain
will leap in joy as rain dribbles bits and parts
into crevices of stone to stay,
to sprout meadowsweet or fern –
or even bleed into ground water that seeps into the sea.
Ahh – to be part of a heaving mass of peak and trough,
particles of salt kissing an echo of my lips.

Bog Cotton

EARTH: Field Stone Grief

—from Edge of the Echo

Memory swarms – promises sown,
    flown like thistle, like flies.
      Scattered to who knows where.
  Days patterned like gray tile, like slate
hanging heavy from the sky, my heart.
 Not even a breath flows through
     the fissures, splinters shorn and sharp.
   Crows hover, shadow the yard.
They watch me watching and do not blink.

FIRE: The Comfort of Solitude

—from Edge of the Echo

Night lingers.
A silver-spotted skipper skims the window
where my lamp beckons – a tiny sun.
Moth moon cradles the cedars,
branches stroking dawn’s purple skirt.
The crickets’ cadence, the dove’s sad song wane,
pink fingers spreading the sky –
light discovers a fawn, a splintered swing.
Morning’s heartbeat a mystery,
Unfolding as stars dissolve,
a mockingbird flirting with fallen figs…

AIR: Learning to Breathe Again

—from Edge of the Echo

   —Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland

The Cairngorms yawn into dawn,
ribbons of fog weaving
above rounded peaks.

Sun saturates mist, light dissolving
echoes from the past –
the shadow, the blur.

Memory and atoms coalesce –
water lilies pause,
a butterfly punctures the breeze,
you stab my thoughts.

The River Spey wrinkles south
where gorse, heather bristle together.

 Oh, the beauty, the sting.

WATER: Leaving You in An Fheothanach

—from Edge of the Echo

—Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland

Waves crest, staccato the rocky shore
then foam into nothingness.

Late summer rakes the timothy,
ridge shadowing horizon's edge.

Clouds scribble a hydrangea-blue sky,
sweep salty tang to the cows, the vetch.

Bruised with heat, forget-me-nots droop,
but one pink bud dares

the sun, and I bend to its sweetness.
At the heart, a ladybug

kisses my lips, ocean whispering
its secrets.

The Light Tears Loose

from The Light Tears Loose

Every now and then / I see a sunset / and I want to crawl inside of myself / and match that kind of
glowing.  —James Diaz

Evening sun divides the horizon,
shadows whispering the lawn,
that last blaze burning the sky.

The air sparks –
the cosmos no longer contains me,
and my soul twists in longing . . .

 A bend in the road surprises with fields of poppies –
awe swelling when I breathe wren-song,
listen to violets unfolding.

And when the light finally flares, then disappears,
I am the craggy mountain, the grain of sand
lapped into the ocean. An ember  
arcing, illuminating the deep.

Re-Creation

from The Light Tears Loose

If blue is dream / what then innocence?  —Federico García Lorca

It is the laughter of your three-year-old
 neighbor when you sail soapy bubbles,
her fingers reaching
 for the drifting moons

It’s the adoration in your dog’s eyes
 when you nuzzle close and stroke his ears
even when shoe leather scatters the hallway

Your son’s trust
 when you subtract the training wheels,
when you run behind him
 as he cycles away

 It’s your mother, losing her words
 and her way, letting you lead her back
to the white-walled room, tuck her into bed

 Iridescent, transparent,
 reflective — the world balanced
on a quivering wand, forming

                                          with your breath

Time is a Crooked Thing

from The Light Tears Loose

    We have to break the mirror to be ourselves. –May Sarton

Though silver and exact, the mirror has no memory.
No stop or start or rewind. Each day an exercise
in remembering who I am. Unremarkable, ordinary,
day unravels into day – brief bliss or grief to cling, to sift through,
to find myself again. Lines deepen, shadows darken,
and we must lean closer, ever closer to see.
Photos flaunt the proof. Had I shattered that mirror
when it first exposed the truth,
I could have hoarded the image of youth, the one my brain
still imagines, though my body begins its betrayal.
Squatting for the dropped sock, stooping to tie the shoe,
the petty aches and pains when cold weather comes,
when dawn silvers the sky with dew – oh, oh, I should have known
when the wren stopped singing the day was done.

Road, Beckoning

from The Light Tears Loose

Moonrise and the raven road call.
Mist cowls the mountains,
copper leaves and duff scoured gray.
The promise of you hums
in the shadow,
      in the light.

A barred owl balances an oak branch,
head swiveling, crickets chirring
the wood line. Bitten by darkness,
moonlight wanders the trail, tempts me on –
tracing an echo
      of what used to be.

Suns to Store and Hoard

from Almost Everything, Almost Nothing

September light slides like honey
through tuscan curtains.
Your hand on my hip,
           I wake in the slow dawn —
warm, the bed where we lie.

Goldfinches squabble in butterscotch leaves
of the oak, tug petals from paling zinnias.
           Caramel-colored shadows shift.
Bumblebees have vanished,
delighting in lands of pineapples, bananas.

But here, lemon-colored kayaks racked,
poplars and butternut wrinkle from green to gold,
mustard and flax beckoning . . . .
           Sighing, you turn, hand tightening,
keeping me from the fall.

Field Without Flowers: Dream Sequence 2

from Almost Everything, Almost Nothing

Summer hums the field,
haze hanging over chicory, switchgrass
like drifting question marks.
Water’s rising in Texas
while I pray for rain in Tennessee.
In yellow poplars, crows chuckle,
chickadees chattering around the barn
where hornets murmur, shape a home
under stripped and peeling wood.
Clouds stack, and still the hum
seeps through the air, my skin.
When I turn, you wait on the steps,
ripples of longing between us.

A Story Travels in One Direction

from Almost Everything, Almost Nothing

He always knew he’d leave her,
like green leaching from September’s trees,
hydrangea-blue webbed with brown veins.
Helicopter seeds eclipse the last gasp of roses,
dogwoods bruised with blood-red berries.

Long, slow summer, shielded with shade,
his hands trace whispers across her skin.
But dusk nips and hay spills from barns,
sheep bleating. Rain hazes the horizon.

Folded in dreams, night thrives,
stars cushioned in darkness,
ravens veiled by branches, shadow.
When she wakes, her flesh will tingle
in the still-stirring air.

Light, Breaking

from Almost Everything, Almost Nothing

Lavender lights the vineyard —
shadows purpling green, tendrils
just beginning to rise.

Your voice still in my heart,
I jog past the fence, the horses,
burnished with dawn.

Day lilies yawn and stretch,
hummingbirds nuzzling sweet centers
of honeysuckle, columbine.

Field furrowed, I shape my thoughts
into such precise rows, ignore
the twinge in my side.

You are ever at the edge
of my vision like a breeze rustling,
tapping the trees. A song

lifting to the clouds, spiraling
into nothingness.

Litany of Hours

Florida flowers

     from The Perfume of Leaving

Long after my grandmother died
I learned her language of growing things.
Lantana, aralia thrived under her touch.
She never sang, but I heard her urging
the hibiscus, the canna lilies,
Birds of Paradise so high
they thrashed the house during storms.

She never cried, never offered a shoulder
when I burbled into tears,
only glanced my way with a frown,
resumed swirling sauce, grating mozzarella. 
Late afternoons, sunlight draped the lanai
before she tucked her curls into a latex cap, 
settled into the pool when we wearied
of splashing around.

Weekdays, Grandma’s navy suit still crisp
when she returned those long Florida evenings
from a litany of hours transcribing,
she and daylight wandered among bursts
of flower pots topped with water,
shears ready to clip the strays.

My thumb doesn’t have her gift for green.
Longings don’t surge
through my fingers to touch seedlings
so they sprout, nurtured by a lifetime
of yearning that never spoke a word.

The Garonne

             from The Perfume of Leaving

The Garonne River, Auvillar, France

When I let the river answer
     instead of the tolling bell
          that measures each breath of my day—

          instead of deep basses, chattering
      grunts and squeals of frogs
that echo my busy thoughts—

When I let the river answer
     instead of the wind fussing grasses,
          sun targeting some things, leaving others in shadow—

          When the cottonwoods sigh their blooms— 
     When beaver dams dry high on the banks—
When poplars scribble green across the sky—

 ripples soften time's illusions,
    wavelets lapping legato, largo
         fluid and static, a center, balance restored

Lament

Tennessee winter

     from The Perfume of Leaving

River slices the gorge, rock stacked
like beehives on both sides of the bank. 
Icy water spills from mountain top,  
and we pause to seek the sun, pale and high, 
between branches scraping winter blue.

Day lengthens but we don’t speak,
hike instead through crisp leaves
and withered apples, snow capping  
everything woolly white.

You empty your pack by pine–bristled outcrop,
boots steady on the edge of stone.
Never glancing at me, you unseal and tilt
the jar. Sharp wind tears at our backs, 
steals ash and bone, flings it into the void.

Wanted: New Heart

from The Perfume of Leaving

Dawn’s breath pinks the sky,
a delicate yawn of gold and orange
as fog shifts the valley.
Yesterday’s rain wrinkled the lake,
clouds veiling the mountain,
sailboats, kayaks shored
as last leaves fall. Sun slants lower,
spring as far away as those we forget.
These sharp days pierce my skin,
memories of flaming maples
haunting the honeycombs.

New Hampshire sunrise