distance

pussy willows
on a frosted trail
warming love's breath soft
on my neck –
distant discourse
a Passion story
babbles from the brook
nearby

no lover

great blue heron
hunting silence
in light rains

leafless
tree shadows
poking night

I lessen
in the pink moon
flowing downriver

no lover
or sea to join
simply pools of dawn

picked

poems half alive
like a clutch of flowers –
I remember you
read to me once
and it felt real

royalty

spring crocus –
inverted umbrellas
elevate leaf litter
how clear
how sweet
to begin
again

ruffles

daffodils
and the weight
of dawn –
morning breezes
ruffle my feathers

emerge

red-headed woodpeckers
drumming

on wooded stage
Spring's ache vibrates

nameless leaves
on the way

grace

waiting on blooms
creeks mutter and declare
everything alive –
water's voice carries
grace notes to the sea

distilled

early violets
hinting ancient sutras –
I become a sparrow
at the well
to thirst or wish

April

spring pulsing –
old river overflows
loose banks
and warblers sing
new hallelujahs

love moves
like falling petals
reflective pools gathering
what cannot be held
here and not

sun reviving
dried wildflowers
and dawn embraced
by blurry moons
clouds uproot in the breeze

joyful rains
give more than we
can take at times
so the resigned inclination
to become wells

snowdrops

sunlight
through petals —
rapture
my native
land

melting

winter perishing –
rain makes certain sounds
on oak and pine
changing who I think
I am

stigmata

Michigan pine —
this land unfolding
validity of horizons
sap and wounds
stigmata of regret

maybe

dawn side of trees
limned as an excessive gift
like birded throats and summer
fern shade canted
towards what if

old wood

ancient ways
making ourselves
new again

yet I am nothing
apart from everything
else

under the soffit
old wood tender
in sunlight

bees settle there
creating honey
even in the rain

fear

I have never shot
a gun but I've been scared
enough to want to shoot
a gun and maybe that is why
war is everywhere

missed

tall pines
above chimneys
I could have been with you
here or there and now
nowhere

on fire

younger me –
I thought zen
would replace fire by now
I was so beautiful
those days

empty

moonlight exposes
nothing at the bottom
of the well –
we drank too much
as Sons of God

accidents

lentils soaking
vegetables roast

Coltrane turns
a vintage kind of way

accidental Sunday
sweetness

jameson neat

Irish whiskey
and us all melody
without chords –
winter steals color
as we choose what to see