At Gloaming Read online

  I see how quickly my small life passes.

  My old dog wonders what the hell

  he’s doing out here at 3:00 a.m.,

  yet he lies down in the grass,

  curls up beside me, unquestioning,

  loyal as any star dog.

  After watching this cosmic light show,

  I come to the thought

  that it’s not important how long a light shines;

  the wonder is that there is light at all.

  Working Women

  It’s only been recently

  that 7-11s

  have occupied the same universe

  as the Pleiades sisters and Cassiopeia.

  I’d like to think these women,

  luminous and heavenly beauties,

  cook thoughtfully and organically,

  wouldn’t just stop and pick up

  some microwave enchiladas for dinner

  while gassing up their cars

  after the commute home from work,

  but as the old bard once said,

  in paraphrase, that is,

  there’s a lot more goin’ down

  than we’ll ever know, eh?

  Cat as Zen Master

  The weather report on the radio,

  the radar display on the computer screen,

  the roiling clouds beyond the tamaracks

  signal heavy rain, lightning, thunder and wind.

  The cat knows this as well as I do,

  though his information comes from sources

  to which I have no access.

  He sleeps with his head on the window sill,

  unconcerned, practicing Zen Master that he is,

  living in the present, as always,

  while I fret about working in the rain tomorrow,

  trees falling on the roof tonight,

  hail stones shredding the garden my wife loves so much.

  Hail Storm

  A hail storm flattened your garden,

  shredded rhubarb leaves and lilies,

  icy shrapnel exploded tomatoes,

  snapped pea vines, pelted pumpkins,

  shriveled the bounteous harvest

  you’d been visualizing

  since sowing seeds in spring’s cool loam.

  And though you mourn,

  you bend back to work,

  nursing and nurturing what remains,

  with tender hands and tears in your eyes,

  the way I know you’ll take care of me

  no matter the storms ahead.

  Evanescence

  The sky is gray and white

  as a nuthatch;

  evanescent pink blossoms

  blow off crabapple trees

  like all the innocent

  iridescent lives

  that will fall today

  all over the world,

  absorbed like snowflakes

  by the warm earth,

  leaving a lingering sweetness,

  a hope for apples.

  The Same Beautiful Air

  My wife asleep beside me,

  two cats sharing the bed with us,

  the dog lying on the floor,

  a Christmas cactus near the window

  and we’re all breathing

  each others’ breaths,

  sharing the same beautiful air

  breathed by every other being

  on this atmospheric planet.

  And you know what that means.

  A Speculation on Spiders

  A great spider spins an invisible thread,

  weaves an invisible web,

  ties together every thing, every where, every when.

  No one knows the entirety of this web,

  where it hangs, what lies between its threads.

  We perceive ourselves existing

  in one time, in one place, on one strand,

  but if we pay attention we feel a vibration,

  music in the humming string to which we cling.

  Some seek the spider,

  some hide from her,

  but no one can escape this web,

  these shining, singing, silver strands.

  Spider

  takes no notice of me

  bending over her weaving.

  She weaves her way inward,

  attaches silken cables to silken spokes,

  spins a seat at wheel’s hub,

  waits for silver strings to sing.

  Toads

  In May

  when it’s finally warm enough

  to open bedroom windows,

  toads sing all night,

  voices hypnotic as choral bells.

  I wish I didn’t need to sleep,

  but the amphibians’ songs

  become a lullaby,

  then a soundtrack for dreams.

  I open my eyes at first light,

  the chorus of toads still singing,

  and I’m not really sure

  if I’m awake or still asleep,

  alive or dead.

  Perhaps we exist in all these states at once.

  Perhaps being is a song we sing to ourselves.

  Perhaps we are the song itself.

  A Serpent’s Lament

  Give me a break!

  I’m not a metaphor

  I’m just a snake,

  a serpent,

  a creature of god, same as you;

  friendly, all in all,

  though I keep to myself.

  To prove my good intentions,

  I gave your wife an apple,

  a beautiful, shiny fruit, finest on the tree,

  that contains all you need to know to get by.

  And what do I get in return?

  Bad press—

  the image of a slimy, slithering, hissy monster,

  vipery, venomous, virulent,

  something to be feared, killed if caught,

  driven into the Irish Sea, for god’s sake.

  How can you blame me

  if I lose it now and again, bite somebody.

  Give me a break.

  I’m just a snake.

  Wood Ticks

  I know a woman who captures spiders

  inside her house, then releases them

  outside, unharmed;

  she allows ladybugs

  to huddle in a little orange ball

  in a tall corner of the ceiling all winter.

  She wouldn’t squish a spider,

  but she picks ticks off her dog

  or her own body

  or mine

  and flushes them down the toilet,

  though she thinks they survive the ride,

  like little body surfers, through the pipes

  leading to the septic tank,

  and she thinks the ticks

  crawl out the tank’s vent pipe,

  creep through the grass, looking for blood.

  The Isle Royale Wolf Pack

  A scenario no one imagined,

  that the end could begin this way;

  the alpha male, another male,

  and one the island’s two females

  taking an entire ecosystem with them

  as they fell through a fragile crust of ice,

  mystery and mystique disappearing with them,

  into an old mine shaft, abandoned in 1853,

  leaving a single she-wolf in a hopeless pack.

  Stars shine on trackless snow;


  a song without a chorus sung

  on the longest winter nights.

  Even the island’s moose,

  pawing for grass beneath crusted snow,

  may feel a nameless emptiness

  at the absence of a song

  that fills them with fear.

  Cascade Falls

  The waterfall seems to say

  I wish I wish I wish

  but I wonder if it’s the water speaking

  or that voice in my head,

  always wishing for something,

  trying to cast a spell or blessing

  on the two of us

  because we have the audacity

  to walk in this slippery stream

  on feet made of clay.

  Cascade River

  Below the falls

  the river riffles and warbles,

  goes on and on

  about how it has to run off,

  though it dearly loves

  the smooth skins

  of these boulders and stones

  it’s been polishing

  since the glacier’s retreat.

  Bottled Water

  A hot wind wicks away the water

  from a person’s skin,

  empties the aquifer of internal water, too,

  after it takes the surface lake of sweat.

  Replenish, replenish,

  the experts say,

  eight glasses a day—

  advice only for the fortunate

  who have no need to carry water

  from a sporadic seep

  or a polluted well ten miles away;

  wait in line at a tanker truck

  in a refugee camp

  with a chance the truck may run dry

  while waiting with a jug full of dust

  and nothing they can say to their children

  while the person in front of them

  is happy to be getting the tank’s dregs

  for her babies to drink.

  Ever think of that when you turn on the tap

  or twist off the cap of the bottled water

  you bought to quench a thirst

  that is the mere drying of morning dew

  on the shore of a vast lake?

  At Gloaming

  Watching four deer

  come out of the woods at gloaming,

  graze in a pasture, purple

  with alfalfa flowers and twilight,

  a woman, finally able to sit a minute,

  breathes the sweet evening;

  her sleeping children, awake in her thoughts,

  bringing their own kind of peace.

  Words are not needed,

  though some might call this moment tranquil,

  poetry.

  Conjecture

  The doe’s back was raked raw,

  claw marks, it seems,

  but what would do such a thing, and how?

  A cougar, I conjecture,

  leaping from a limb onto her back,

  but how did she shake it off

  and why no bite marks on her neck?

  I wonder, was that same doe

  the matted pile of hide

  and scattered bones I found

  when the snow melted?

  And why did she return to memory

  six years later—

  a kind of re-birth for the sake of a poem,

  a lesson in mortality sent by some local god?

  A Small Kindness, This

  An anonymous passerby,

  someone on their way to work,

  perhaps some bicyclist,

  took the time to remove the cat,

  hit by a car in the night, from the roadway,

  place it in the ditch among wild violets

  before more tires, feasting crows,

  and other agents of decay

  could begin their work on the carcass;

  a small kindness, this,

  to foster a measure of dignity

  during these times of anonymous death,

  unmarked graves.

  Maple Syrup Time

  With a blessing we enter the woods,

  trudging through fresh-fallen snow,

  knee-deep and sparkling, rejoicing

  under sky the color of a bluejay’s wing;

  tree markers, drillers, tappers,

  bucket hangers and harvesters,

  humbly and gratefully reaping the gift

  of soil and water and sun

  given us by acer saccharum,

  the generous sugar maples,

  casting their shadows,

  like a forest of sundials on settled snow,

  telling us it’s time for making maple syrup!

  No Help

  October’s golden tamaracks

  return yellow light to the sun,

  clear water gives back blue

  borrowed from the sky.

  A luxurious mink,

  fur, wet and glistening,

  bursts onto the scene,

  a cameo appearance,

  a teaser, suggesting purpose of being

  as it rustles through dry cattails,

  a destination seemingly in mind,

  so unlike browsing deer

  moving from one green leaf to the next,

  the way so many people

  seem to move about their lives.

  Though there are many theories

  as to its pertinence,

  there seems to be no help

  from the producer or director of this scene,

  left to the viewer to find whatever meaning,

  if any, there is to be found in blatant mystery.

  Apprentice Gods

  We spend the afternoon

  rolling rocks down a sandy scree slope

  at the base of Orphan Mesa,

  laughing like little children

  as the stones tumble and jump

  until lying still as gravestones

  when gravity exhausts itself on level ground.

  We play at rearranging the landscape

  as if we are apprentice gods, practicing on stones

  before learning to stir water and wind

  into floods and hurricanes,

  shake the earth into quaking, just for a laugh.

  Tomorrow, we decide,

  we’ll plant trees and heal the scars of erosion,

  maybe pick up trash along the highway

  on our continuing quest for divinity.

  Mending Mittens

  Mending my leather mittens

  for the third time this winter,

  I sew them with waxed string

  made to repair fishing nets,

  hoping they’ll last

  until the splitting maul rests

  against the shrunken woodpile

  and the hoe and spade come out of the shed.

  I find myself praying.

  Blessed be those who have laced together

  the splits at the seams of this world,

  repair its threads of twisted waters.

  Blessed be those who stitch together

  the animals and the land,

  repair the rends in the fabric

  of wolf and forest,

  of whale and ocean,

  of condor and sky.

  Blessed be those who are forever fixing

  the tear between people and the rest of life.

  May we all have enough
thread,

  may our needles be sharp,

  may our fingers not throb or go numb.

  May each of us find an apprentice,

  someone who will take the needle from our hands,

  continue all the mending that needs to be done.

  At the Arboretum

  This summer day is a woman

  wearing a blue bonnet, green slippers

  and a floral print dress;

  she tends to beds of black-eyed susans, blue-eyed grass,

  purple coneflowers and climbing clematis,

  a garden of phlox, ox-eye daisies;

  a bower of blue spruce, Japanese yews,

  chestnuts, walnuts, butternuts and hickories,

  a lawn of pampas grass and sarsaparilla.

  This day, I spend with two women who love me,

  each in their own way;

  two women I love,

  each in their own way.

  One brings me wild rice,

  one pays for my lunch.

  I can’t comprehend any of it—

  the way earth and flower

  eat each other, but neither dies.

  I don’t understand love, either;

  that comes in as many colors and shapes and aromas

  as flowers in a garden, trees in a woods, grasses on the prairie.

  Grasses Rustling

  Beauty has become an app

  in an oxymoronic place

  called virtual reality.

  Thoughtful thought is passé,

  lost among bits and bytes;

  truth is subjective, irrelevant.

  And poetry,

  oh god, dear, dear poetry

  doesn’t know it’s dead

  among the corpses of words unsaid,

  goes on being written in grasses rustling,

  spoken by the wind.

  Coneflowers

  Prairie coneflowers

  purple and yellow

  petals hanging

  like the folded umbrellas

  on a closed bistro patio

  attract honey bees

  and monarch butterflies