Journey

On a distant ridge, a slow
green and gray dance
as clouds sort through trees,
the trees will never leave,
clouds never return.

In harbor the outgoing tide reveals
a flat of shrimp, sand fleas and worms,
shorebird swarms crowd in to eat
their way back south.

After this glass of wine
I’ll leave on a journey.
I can return like the shorebird,
or be a cloud.

Leaves

as seen on Bolts of Silk

I walk a moonlit path,
listen to eastern voices
and sleep in the day.

I’m like fallen leaves
scattered by an autumn wind,
not to be together again,

not to be a tree again,
not again to be with blossoms
that went before to earth.

Time Goes Away

Time waits for the pewter-on-copper
morning to spread over miles of gray
mudflat, then time dissipates the fog,
pushes the tide in and the shorebirds out.

At my cottage time doesn't pass,
it stays the night in the corner
behind the rocker, then comes out
to rearrange the parts. Time whirls

the fly around, sags the door
a little closer to the floor,
drops dust on the cobwebs,
puts the cat in the kitchen window,

all the same parts are here
but they're in new places. I quickly dress,
I don't want to get behind,
time hurries too, I rush out

to Bottle Beach and time rushes with me,
I find a driftwood log with a view
of old pilings, I stop moving
and time goes away.

Buffy

with apologies to Lynne Allen

Nine elders cut from the same cloth,
a common thread, as like as water and rock,
but Uncle Dave is never confused
with Aunt Pen. Revolving around

the same core the extended brood
travel the same plane, though
Hugh’s orbit is a little odd.
Then, born in the early,

Buffy, a charming diversion, dances
at her own eccentric pitch, petite Buffy,
on a special mission from outer space
heads off on her own spin

about the galaxy, on a swing around
the family circle, fancied for making elders
look all the more the same, fancied for testing
ancestral myth, Buffy, tolerated,

barely.

She Sleeps

for Sunday Scribblings

In the six passionate years before marriage
Jim and Angie love and play together,
and then she starts to dislike his plaid clothes,
he doesn't like the way she eats

with her mouth open, Angie doesn't like
Jim's vulgar friends and he hates
the sound of her broken-rock voice.
Angie is getting in Jim's way, he calls

Angie's sister, Karen, and asks
if Angie is prone to lapses, like standing
in the doorway staring into space,
Karen says no. Jim calls Walter

and says Angie gave him the message
that Walter wants to talk, Walter says no.
Angie drinks wine until she sleeps,
Jim picks her up in a blanket, she sleeps,

he lowers her into the new freezer,
she sleeps, Jim closes the lid
and loads bags of fertilizer on top,
she sleeps, the freezer starts.

In the morning Jim removes the bags,
he asks Karen, she says no,
Walter says no, Jim tells the skeptical
police he remembers Angie getting up

in the night, the skeptics don't find anything,
Jim demands they looked everywhere,
the skeptics find only an ominous message
scratched on the inside of the new freezer.