100 Short Poems
The Conversations of Matter
The many dialects of wind-assisted leaves the forest curates.
Surf and shore together constantly improvising their ancient dialogue.
The polyglot of rumbling, ticking and twanging in the built environment.
Except when fractured, the inexorable background murmur of tectonic plates.
Beneath them all, the eternal colloquy of energy and matter trading places.
In my cell
In the bright Spring sky the giddy wind
makes the green tree tops dance and wave.
Alone inside, I read Apollinaire's Selected Poems.
In the bright Spring sky the giddy wind
makes the green tree tops dance and wave.
Nature Mort
Bathed in early Spring sunshine
the sparrow busy pecking for food
is focused on life and necessities,
oblivious to other concerns, like
the assassin cat creeping closer.
Aspects of moon
The full new moon at 3 AM is gleaming white and high in the sky
- a small, bright globe pinned to the plush black of space.
At 6 AM it is a large orange ball sitting low to the horizon behind a
scrim of clouds in a brightening sky ratcheting toward dawn.
Later, hidden by the sun's dazzle, I can only imagine its latest version.
Winter full moon
In a cloudless dawn sky
low and seemingly close
large and shining brightly
settling a calming influence
on a solitary, unquiet mind.
Winter Storm
Even a heavy snowfall
blown nearly horizontal by a strong wind
eventually touches down
hiding the world's colors
under its one white mantle.
Transitions
As this autumn season ends
frigid air blankets the ground.
Each day is a bridge from chores and toil
back again to the dreams we woke from
and also forward to the new ones we'll make.
Yosemite, September 2019
Ascending a steep trail in the Sierras,
somewhere up ahead,
Yosemite Falls
asleep now in small pools
dreaming of another season.
Monkeys Touch the Moon
From a tree's lowest branch
above the pond
monkey climbs down monkey
so that the last might
touch the moon.