We make too much light

Enough to confuse the night

And make birds wonder

You dark-bottomed clouds

Sound your cannons! Crack the sky!

Send us your hard rain!

 Expressionless eyes

The cat doesn’t care of me

Then his whiskers twitch

My faith has new leaves

Blooms sweeter than affection

Roots stronger than limbs

Handcrafted stories

The parables of fathers

Now listen, my child

Leave room between thoughts

Silent and unintended

Simple and nameless

 The next phrase I find

I will write on fine vellum

With a raven quill

The honey locust

Bends west in the summer wind

The weakest branch snaps

A fire denatures

What remains unrecognized

Energy released

Formed of grace and song

  A bird is a miracle

Feathered perfection

The grass of summer

That invites children to play

Comforts too the graves

O span of my life

I am the greatest and least

The mountain and wisp

Whatever you have

Contentment cannot compare

Nor ever shall it

Here's what we have wrong 

Homo Economicus

We desire too much

Garden ever new

Increased with buds in the night

My joy each morning

It's almost too late

We lit the ravenous fire

Now it overtakes

My Mother

Oh yes, she would say

Lemurs of Madagascar

Are quite rare, you know

There's always beyond

All that's ever been seen

There's a beyond that

She was spurious

Belied by a lustrous shell

A coarse grain inside

A sun-faced poppy

Carressed by a butterfly

Glows with fruition

Are we hedonic

Is pleasure our end sublime 

Or placidity

How it shakes my heart

No sound like it in nature

A rattlesnake warns

Ever flow the rivers

Ever constant surge the tides

Always liquid life

I'm a collector

A keeper of loose verses 

Found along the way

Bare feet in the grass

Especially for children

Makes running more fun

Blistering sunset

A forest ascends as smoke

The fire does not sleep

Was there always love

Is it older than our kind

Is it immortal

Something always shines

Even in the darkest dream

A light can find you

All those who are gone

Slain by America's guns

Belong to one grave

When the earth's face cracks

Desperate - dessicated

Living things athirst

She gazes at me

Nothing fulsome about this dog

She rolls on her side

Thirteen billion years

Light from far as we can see

Does its source still burn?

Unforsaken seeds

Dry, faithful and unquickened

Waiting for the rain

When I was a child

The night was a huge eggshell

With holes pricked in it

I heard a rock fall

Conceding to gravity

When the last grain slipped

After days trying

I remember that soft note

When I first whistled

I’m derivative

Connected to everything

But original

Haiku seem hasty

Just seventeen syllables

But simply enough

Perfectly fulgent

Ready lips of the iris

Lavish with pollen

There was such silence

The moth's flight was a tempest

My breathing the gale

From archaic seas

Sculpted by wind and water

Symmetry revealed

 Hard-bound by ages

This wood will never kindle

Or be hewn by hand

Dreamt of Bob Dylan

He said Like A Rolling Stone

Is a limerick

What use for solace

When we have failed the children

Woe is not enough

Where is our conscience

What do we hold as decent

Children want to know

School of innocents

All of them are agonized

Nineteen won't come home

 As for thoughts and prayers

They won't redress the losses

Of blameless children

Quiet monument

No pharaoh's tomb is grander

Or more sanctified

Steadfast wings of stone

Shaped by the wind's constant hand

Earthbound forever

I just stopped myself

I was reaching for the app

That names the heavens

Our impermanence

Beyond the intimate stars

Vast beyond vastness

A storm is honest

Not doubtful or beguiling

Pure in its fury

The Meteor

With brilliant effect

It surrendered to the earth

Burning in its fall

In a ceaseless gale

Four careless crows find their play

Gliding above me

The forest is parched

Deprived of quickening rain

It can only wait

Scrupulous poets

Gather our misplaced moments

Forgotten in haste

My mother wore pins

Of places traveled - things loved

Life on her lapel 

Surely a good trail

Best travelled in the morning

When elk leave their tracks

First there's a shadow

Soundlessly across the trail

The hawk soars away

It has been watching

Its haunches coiled and ready

The cougar lunges

In a time prior

Before we said "It is mine"

No need for a fence

After the wind storm

There is quiescence at dawn

A fine day ahead

The wind says nothing

It has no body - no voice

But the forest howls

 

                                                          

Rodin

The hands that touched this

Could bring life to the formless

La sculpture au Coeur

  Frondescent pear tree 

Burgeons in a spring lyric

"I am beautiful"

Are there shared stories?

Narratives we all embrace

Can they still be found?

Eternal flowers

  The joy when they bud and bloom

Then to seed again

A lightless cavern

Roosted for a thousand years

A primeval bird

As moon is to sun 

He brightens at her pleasure

Trusting in her light

William Shakespeare

We all have the words

To portray the human sphere

He chose the finest

 All this is borrowed

The sunlight - water - my breath

How can I repay?

 

I am not from here

I am born of melting snow

From alpine meadows

 

Dark skies in Flagstaff

We’ll leave the lights off for you

To let blackness shine

This is a fine trail

With the afternoon ahead 

There’s time to wander

 

The organ grinders

Fill the market with their songs

Paris on Sunday

 

Lacing the new grass

There is no softer lantern

Than the sun of May

 

I don't know this crow

But I gather from its gaze

It remembers me

 The curse of pigeons

Their calls and songs are lovely

But they crap too much

The best about me

After all the suns and moons

I am incomplete

She is a prism

Through which the white light of day

Bends into colors

                                                                

On this earthly page

Is writ the story of ages

Each passing to each

We can be lunar

With secrets on a dark side

Cold and quiescent

 Virginia Woolf

She ached for a moment

When her life was abated

Into one bright phrase

Good morning garden

Did you increase in the night?

Are you rife for day?

A nap’s a fine place

              Where the day exhales its cares

And small dreams respire

The charm of aging

The horizon moves with you

Tempting you onward

Dire humility

She holds a sign at the curb

“Please, I have to ask”

 

A lone mockingbird

Virtuoso of morning

Discovers new songs

A torpid tortoise

Retreats to the midday shade

Slumbering slowly

Accept the good stuff

The random fractions of grace

They are everywhere

When the grass grows green

The lovers lie mouth to mouth

Shamelessly embraced

This is a fine trail

With the afternoon ahead

There’s time to mosey

With thin hands folded

Her eyes invite our honor

Ask what I suffer

Rejoice the nameless

Beauty without reference

Inscrutable peace

He is mendicant

Made poor by ravenous love

Hungry and alone

The dawn smells sweetest

Colorless and still shadowed

Dampened with night's dew

The sedulous dove

Hearkening the call of spring

Attends her new nest

Surrounded by songs

Daybreak on the San Pedro

Peace without thinking

 

Despots cannot trust

The love of those most loyal

Fear has doubtful faith

In the pyramid

Entombed for the afterlife

A pharaoh exhumed

When she barely speaks

“I cannot remember joy”

Will anyone hear?

Through carious leaves

(The remains of last summer)

The first crocus sprouts

A quail will suffice

To make a day rewarding

Or a whiff of Spring

I have found a glen

Lush and right with honeydew

A good place to rest

Yesterday’s dinner

Like a savored memory

Gets better with time

The charm of aging

The horizon moves with you

Tempting you onward

Who made this burrow

This cool sequestered castle

Where the scurry’s kept

When our grandchildren

Create a warm web of love

We’re gladly entrapped

 

My Mom always heard

(Even when I was sneaky)

The cookie jar lid

 

When I have a dream

That I do not know my name

(Am I lost or free)

Sunny spring blossoms

Besotted by eager bees

Trembling at their touch

Assiduous hands

With continuous caress

Water carves the rock

Dry seeds will not sprout

Another rainless winter

Their grace will abide

Will the quail return

To the nest they made last year

For a new covey?

The song of my life

Written in a key of blue

Lyrics unfinished

When hope came her way

It nodded and tipped its hat

But chose not to stop

There’s a narrow bridge

Between grim desperation

And heroism

When the bridge is gone

Do you concede and return

Or descend the gorge

Toll the highest peal

No matter how tall the belfry

Pull with all your strength

On this earthly page

Is writ the story of ages

Each passing to each

Wealth makes us obtuse

How we pity the poorest

But not who they are

Ukraine

There’s no truth in war

It's total hypocracy

What is sure is not

Day of savagery

A family cloaked in dread

Fleeing a mad bear

While your homeland burns

I’m ashamed to be human

My sympathy stinks

How can there be peace

When the bombs stop falling

The pain remembers

The train rolls away

Her hand presses the window

Merciless farewell

Irony of war

The insufferable thing

All can be suffered

 

Cold hand of winter

Holds a penetrating palm

On the breast of day

Longing falls like snow

Collecting on the times past

Benumbing regret

Enjoy this brief earth

And your spot of life on it

Savor what is green

The blister beetles

Emerge in the spring to mate

For only one moon

Seasons don’t reason

Heavens spin without rhyming

Nature knows no time

Life is a garden

Forming seasonal blossoms

And tender new shoots

Behold the morning!

Made fine by the desert sun

And the song of quail

 

Divide what you need

Into nature’s vast array

To get boundless awe

When I have a dream

That I do not know my name

(Am I lost or free)

Lone Palo Verde

Green-skinned arms embrace the spring

Bedecked with ochre

Rain drops together

While its lighthearted cousin

Dances in flurries

Forgotten figments

Distant pieces of my sleep

Only the night knows

A sleek roadrunner

Too sudden for the lizard

Snatches a quick meal

 

What harm we have done

That the wild things pass away

Lost for what we want

                                                                

Heaven’s a story

Comfortably presupposed

But harder to prove

 

The blood of the earth

Courses mountains and lowlands

Circulating life

Anger grief and envy

Will stay the unguarded heart

Cold-bound and alone

She’s a star apart

Who left her constellation

For larger heavens

Alas jealousy!

Comparison’s horrid child

Edacious always

When I had a dream

Of picking huckleberries

(I longed for mother)

When I had a dream

That my dog could talk with me

(It was sweet repose)

The quick roadrunner

Thrashes a snake on the rock

Then prinks its proud crest

Our fears are a reef

Waiting for an angry swell

To form broad waves

Blues on the front porch

Thicker than a southern night

Howlin’ with the hounds

In the budding grove

The orange trees are attired

With nectarous buds

When I have a dream

That I float over treetops

(I am a child again)

Surge! Swell angry waves!

Let cold currents stack in fury!

Heave ocean’s broad breast!

After the ascent

Behold the beauty below

And go down slowly

Migrating northward

The geese announce news of spring

Wake and greet the sun!

Why snakes are awful:

They lurk in grass - trees - water

And swallow you whole

Despite yesterday

The sun is absent-minded

Fresh light for today

When ably unfurled

There’s no sail like a poem

Filled with windward verse