How modest is rice

Graceful grass heavy with seeds

The grain of the world

 A current so swift

It will surely reach the sea

All is swept downstream

Consecutively

Measuring their lives in steps

They keep following

 

 You once danced with him

You were young - too long ago

But he knows the song

 Strengths can be weakness 

Virtues on which we rely

Are bane in surfeit

 O the difference

Could souls be seen more surely

Than the binding flesh

 The blues are the roots

Of music's ancestral tree

All the rest is fruit

Waiting for respect

 They are camped at the border

Where will their lives start?

 Shimmy and shake it

Get over to the juke joint

Dance your cares away

 I won some - lost some

Some that I can't remember

Few that I regret

The animals know

Our thankless dominium

Is a delusion

Culture must be mad

To misconstrue fear with truth 

Destruction with might

 Listen to the woods

Carefully though they whisper

They have tales to tell

 I'm built for comfort

I like to take it easy

I'm not built for speed

 I would like to meet

The child that gave me this life

Just once, to thank him

 We've been here before

Where end is the beginning

We know this story

 She comes home at dawn

Wrinkled and smelling of night

Will the house be locked

 A hawk flies over

A mouse dangling in its clutch

Pigeons flee in fear

Cookin' a picnic

Yeah, we gonna jump awhile

To the fife and drums

Otha Turner was one of the great Mississippi cane fife players. The attached link will give you a taste of his life and music.

https://vimeo.com/158052541

 My best shirt is old

Faded and frayed - it knows me

Like a trusted friend

 On a well-thumbed page

A verse that is often read

But seldom heeded

Full many a bloom

Consecrated by the bees

Blush from the blessing

 They slept on the floor

Underneath the line of fire

Sheltered by terror

 A wave needs no name

Gathering - rolling - plunging

Like credence in time

A premonition 

Of tempests beyond the tides

From the ocean's heart

 Hungered hummingbird

Hovers at every color

It's always athirst

They're all about me

Interminable stories

None is about me

Words in the forest

Pathetic jurisdiction 

Nature shan't be split

 

Don't accept slander

Whence you do not seek counsel

Defer to your heart

It is so tempting

A pie on the windowsill

Almost cool enough

 With her chariot

Did Eos spread the new day

 How the heavens blushed

 2022

A year of rage and relief

Hopeful confusion

 Even the mountains

Shouldered with forests and snow

Will wash to the seas

 After the fury

Of the night's delerium

The snow now quiet

 Light we do not see

Voices that we could not hear

Thoughts we will not know

 My favorite songs

Birds - wind - thunder - coyotes

And water falling

Comfort of winter

With its vast sunlit snowfields

Where spring sleeps beneath

Gifts of December

Iciles on the willow 

Yuletime's welcome hearth

 A tree not chosen

Stands alone on Christmas eve

Glorious with snow

Dogs have holidays

When they can eat and relax

Perpetually 

 A foolish question

Consisting of just five words

When will you grow up?

When we conceived time

To measure the infinite

Did nature notice

 Who knows what there is?

What if it's all make-believe?

Precarious tales 

 

These precious children 

Fragile and invincible

Hope for tomorrow

The season's spirit

Gingerbread trimmed with cheer

Frosted with delight

 A holiday tree

Bedecked with sparkling snow

Deep amid the woods

Aspens assembled

Barely white with winter's frost

Shudder in the wind

 If you should wonder

Close your eyes and look at me

I am always here

 To know nature's mein

Venture out and seek nothing

Listen with your heart

 Back to the dugout

He glances at the pitcher

Who just struck him out

 In the lowest place

Where raindrops form a puddle

The birds come to drink

 

From a bee

I'm lost in this bloom

Where the sweetest nectar brews

I'm found in this bloom

 A floating full moon

Perhaps a balloon escaped

From a child's bouquet

In noon's effulgence

The dragonfly's blue dazzle

Untranslatable

 What is worth it all

Favor, fixtures and fortune

Or maybe a cloud

 This place is not ours

Its immanence surpasses

The end of our mind

 Little can be said

Or unsaid, ironically

About a good joke

 When tired of the noise

She tucked between the pages

Of the next good book

There goes wee Marie

Uplifted with blue balloons

Filled with sheer delight

 For each wax a wane

All contradictions resolved

The stars glow at noon

 When the sun is low 

Pebbles cast long shadows

And seem like mountains

 Stones tossed in the pond

Bubbles rise to the surface

Minnows swim to them

 Winter is now here

What was once blooming and ripe

Now dry and brittle

 There've been larger days

When more was gained or forfeit

But none more peaceful

 A thin line of life

Betrodden on the hillside

By javelinas

 When the night takes me

May it be a moonless sky

Lit by trembling stars

 Woke up this mornin'

Blues is about what is left

After what is lost

 Hear the crickets sing

When the night is warm and close

And birds are quiet

 Thanks is not enough

Nor the expression of love

For family's grace

Leave no day unclaimed

Or memory forsaken

Now bestows the past

None of us will know

Creatures that lived in the shells

Covered by the tides

He held to the hope

Like a limpet clinging to a rock

Crashed by waves of doubt

I have to wonder

Who can thrive without the wild

Or dance with no song 

 The sun in autumn

Barely kisses November

Sending a warm chill

Without objection

Night concedes to a new dawn

And waits 'til twilight

 Hear November sing

The wind through Ponderosas

Whirring a cold song

I join great spaces

The mountains and their forests

I am kin with them

 Political lines

Separate people and lands

Invisible walls

 For Willie

Making you a wish

As glad as flowers for sun

 Rejoice this birthday!

 I'm too far away

I cannot smell the forest

Or taste the thin air

What savvy they have

The capacity of dogs

To tell without words

 All darkness in there

Without a door or window

One way to get out

The priceless secret

Your life's inscrutable span

Cannot be appraised

 The sign is cardboard

She searches for eye contact

Anything will help

 Slim Jimmy Walker

Singin' blues about last night

Hopin' she'll come home

 A blood moon rises

Like a ruddy-faced farmer

Watching over crops

 A purple button

Left by a crow on the rail

As thanks for some corn

 There's a perception

That all is solid and clear

Then awakening

 Rage has two faces

 The haughty simper of pride

And greed's  joyless scowl

 Agreeable quail

Nod as they scurry away

Swift and certainly

There is a thin veil

Between belief and trueness

That's easily torn

Dia de los Muertos

Remnants in all folk

Auspices of those before

Why we praise this day

 A note from a wasp:

It's winter and I will die

The queen has the eggs

Stingy Jack the knave

Enjoined from heaven and hell

Roams with a lantern

A skrik in the night

Is it a ghost or goblin?

Horripilation!

almost futilely

waves throw themselves on the shore

unrelentingly

 Atop the back wall

Like faithful to a service

Quail in procession

 Unembarrassed cat

Indifferent to my gaze

Spreads out on his back

 She hangs by a string

On the verge of touching him

Does she dare let go? 

 

An old length of twine

(that once fastened a package)

Now in a lark's nest

Lashed by autumn gales

The pines discharge dry needles

Undressed but dauntless

  The leaves once brittle

Now moldered beneath the snow

Will nourish in spring

 Heed the tempest sky

That quakes the trees to their roots

First hint of winter

 Machines work for us

Until they are too useful

Then we work for them

 The antagonists

One launches his best fast ball

His foe coils to swing

Afar in the green

Where the lark first learned to sing

Songs not wrought for us

 The smallest are most

A note - a smile - a kind thought

A dog at your side

 He gave her his word

It has been so long ago

She cannot find it

 The books  are patient

Waiting cover to cover

In the library

 My father's broad smile

Belied the weight in his chest

As he lit one more

Where is more pleasure?

Delectable tomatoes

Are gladness enough

 There's not enough sun

To warm the blood of the trees

They must stay for spring

Do the trees lament?

That shed dry tears of scarlet

Do they dread winter?

In the bracing breeze 

Geese declare in formation

Sapless leaves concede

 October's vigor

Bull elk sound hungry trumpets

Trees ablaze with rust

 

 Savor this season

Apples, squash and wild berries

Cornucopia!

The spruce in Autumn

Coronated with fresh cones

Oozing with resin

 There's reward in age

After all the suns and moons

I become younger

Where this road may end

Matters hardly anymore

The passage fulfills

 The sea of grasses

Lighter than the air around

Almost touching earth

 A roborant fruit

The juniper berries ripen

Seducing the jays

 A new peach blossom

Contends for the bee's passion

Entreating - Choose me!

 A seed in the wind

He left without a goodbye

Carelessly aloft

 Fall arrives forthwith

Charging through September's door

Letting in a draft

 Perfectly disguised

A horny toad is a rock

Until the crow leaves

 

I dreamt that I jumped

Straight off the thirty-fifth floor

Woke before landing

A garden abashed

Sheds its glamorous attire

Naked but for seeds

 As the garden wanes

The last of September's rains

Give it life again

 The drying asters

Perish ere living again

 Beauty in demise

The golden spiral 

Theophany of numbers

Unfolds in a rose

 Mother wore purple

(her twisted fingers ringless)

Earrings from Tibet

 

Despite botany

Flowers are miraculous

Stems graced with magic

 

The veins in the leaves

Are portraiture of the trees

Canopy of art

 

 Reluctant autumn

Holds fast to September's hand

Still dressed for summer

Sun touches here last

A remote and restful gulch

Of shadows and moss

 As far as I know

It's just me and this spider

And others, maybe

I'm fine to not know

The where in my whereabouts

Just here is enough

 The meadow is dressed

In white lace of  morning dew

Soon unveiled by sun

 

Two hat-topped women 

Patiently in the plaza

Wait to sell their corn

Pure society

Ants bring their dead to the queen

For her to safekeep

Her grief so heavy

Her days enjoy no sunshine

And plead for night's shade

The season's first chill

The squirrels busy with their stores

A burnished leaf falls

 Just after breakfast

She offers a dry aside

I want my heart back

Alert upright ears

The doe turns her graceful neck

Her fawn bounds away

Intrinsically

Have faith in nature's canon

Written with water

The blanket of night

Is coldest just before dawn

And then the day stirs

A truth of its own

Three point one four one five . . . 

Endlessly unique

Denuded and dry

A sunflower sadly bows

Its seed-heavy head

I can barely see

There is a surrounding fog

Sweet obscurity

 The crow soared aloft

Sounded a confident caw

Dove for a lizard

 At the south window

A cat sleeps on the warm sill

Grandma counts stitches

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