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—from All the Way Through
Branches twist in February’s wind,
rain usurped by snow,
dew turning into crystalled coins.
Cardinals color the feeder,
pulse in the gloom – their chirrups
echoing the yard and sage grass
as sun sets. Each tree branch frosted,
the choir of evening descends
into silence. Ice like braille lines
the entrance, cobwebs of moonlight
sifting spirits still tucked in crevices.
Maybe our loss is the miracle.
A shaman somewhere etches names
in the cave of the dead.
—from All the Way Through
Gulls
and cormorants scrape a paper sky,
shriek above seas marbled with veins of foam
that chide and hiss the shoreline. A bell buoy clanks
in slinking mist – distance disappearing.
Plovers peep along the rim of sand and sea.
Rain later today, but we expect that – know that just beyond
what we can see is another storm. We wait –
watch the haze bloom lighter, brighter
before a surge of gray spools through, thunder offshore.
A gust brushes ghostly fingers across the strand.
Closer. Then rain pummels what’s left
of blue haw, sea oats, smacks the dunes, the boardwalk.
Nature still in control here, at the edges of a continent
changing.
—from All the Way Through
You’re painting rain
into this dazzling day.
Don’t worry, your secret
is safe with me, cuisle mo chroidhe.
I know your heart is locked
in loss, no way to pivot
without spiraling into a white abyss.
But I long for your laugh
between the cedars, the way
you pause before answering
the woodpecker and twilight
with a frosty kiss. How, curious,
you lick each dawn with mist
rising from valleys and lakes.
How you rain gold, red, and rust.
How the taste of earth is just a short sleep
before beginning again.
Gaelic: vein of my heart/sweetheart
—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.
—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.
—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.
—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
—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.
—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…
—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.
—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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
