He stops in the park

All he owns in a trash bag

Where will he next sleep?

Please consider this

There's more truth in a raindrop

Than in all the verse

This is a circle

A self-replenishing course

Deathless and renewed

Hounds howling behind

Crouched in the Great Dismal Swamp

He gasps for freedom

 My bright scarlet dawn

Ever-changing realm of light

Fades into the day

 Impermanent life

A rose not spared for fragrance

Or tree for its strength

 Red-headed vulture

Glides on the storm's forward draft

Tilting its broad span

Ineffable way

Impassively abundant

Calm without effort

 Draped in glaucous clouds

The mountain warns in deep voice

I will drop this cloak!

 Surmise white and black

Source of all color and none

Pacifically one

A brilliant day

All that the sunlight touches

Is almost molten

Her days are now pale

Dry petals floating beyond

Accepting the stream

 To be good enough

In a tumultuous world

A small place for calm

Lash me to the tree

Leave me to confront the gale

Fearless and awestruck

 

In the fire's dark scar

Golden crownbeard flourishes

From ashes to life

 Natural fellow

Auburn locks to his shoulders

Passes with a smile

 The glorious bloom

Untimely cut and displayed

Will tender no seeds

 Do not rage the night

It will close its heavy eyes

And bring you comfort

 This unshadowed noon

Lie down in a soft meadow

Bare your breast to warmth

 Now go out with me

Inhale this rain's balmy draught

We'll take no shelter

 This day so shining

So filled with glorious light

That I dare not blink

A sonorous horn

Portends a lumbering train

Departing Flagstaff

 You know the feeling

When the air is close and tense

Foretelling the rain

What has not been seen

So beautiful nonetheless

No more if beheld

 Please don't explain me

Or assign me some purpose

Leave me uncertain

 This dawn of summer

A smile on the garden's face

Sparkling eyes of dew

 Chickadees chirping

Bright-vested robins hopping

Jays call from the trees

 There's too much knowledge

And a shortage of wonder

Gaze and be amazed

 Dangerous cadence

The sky descends in torrents

Run for higher ground!

 When you do not seek

What abundance you will find

Waiting in the woods

 Sun-seared and wind-worn

He stands at the Interstate

His life on his back

What the lightning said 

Be warned of the laden sky

Heed my bright alarm

 They are less married

Derived of their yesterdays

Together but not

 There's a better grace

In a single wildflower

Than all religions

The US Constitution

 By few for many

Reconstruct this foundation

Hold benevolence

 Tell me when you tire

Place your hand on my shoulder

Where you rest - I'll rest

Its own form of life

Lichen's subtle elegance

Dampens in deep hues

 Rejoice the new rain

Carving courses on the land

Down - always downward

 Revel in the wild

The tender tuft of new grass

A supple mushroom

World Athletic Championships

Pure speed strength and grace

Running flying and throwing

Perfection of form

I'm in a basement

A black floor of clouds above

Thunderous footsteps

 I would feel alone

Without my quiet comrades

And their blooms aglow

 The blues tells the truth

About love and loss and pain

Naked soulful truth

 The life of the night

The birds travel - flowers grow

Quickened while we sleep

Admirably whole

The forest is connected 

One and all akin

Haiku at low tide ...

Wild Oregon beach

An eagle lands on driftwood

The tide will take this

 These clouds are heavy

But will not send us their rain

Or draw lightning's sword

Turbid sediment

Settles to bottom of life

Layer on layer

 A sudden axe swings

A blade cleaves the bark

The tree screams in pain

 As I descended

The sweet smell of the forest

Told me to find her

 Foretold by a wind

The sky's sudden turbulence

Shakes a summer day

 There is no cover

The rain is cold on my shoulders

I am new and clean

 Those who must question

Whether they are right enough

Will never know peace

I admired the clouds

As they concealed the buck moon

And bared it again

In the distant rain

A burning bridge of color

Joins the sky and land

 

Rumors of the past

Grey stories of hungry hearts

Lonely untracked tears

 After last night's storm

Pine needles sparkle with rain

The day full afresh

 Tender the moonless stars

Tender the fresh face of dawn

Tender thoughts of her

 Such is the glad space

Still and impossibly white

Where nothing happens

 Ubi Sunt

I yearn fallen fruit 

Buried in snows and leaves

Generations past

 The hand of a friend

Is warmer than summer's days

And more enduring

 Could I be a cloud

I would congregate with kin

And anoint the earth

Past has no fortune

 Forever a beginning

Always a new turn

 

As the seed of fruit

We are those who came before

Broad trees foreshadowed

 When I’m felled at last 

Read the story in my girth

The rings of my life

 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