The Wild Geese Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer’s end. In time’s maze over fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names that rest on graves. We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed’s marrow. Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in …
Poetry
Deer
Deer their steps are liquid though air—delicate as Spring's first flowers their shy gaze darts here and there—a quick knowing deeper than sight in a loose weave they travel—giving space to trees and sky like you the valley grows gentle around them ~ Elizabeth Reninger * …
To That Which Holds
Sabbaths, 1982—IV Thrush song, stream song, holy love That flows through earthly forms and folds, The song of Heaven’s Sabbath fleshed In throat and ear, in stream and stone, A grace living here as we live, Move my mind now to that which holds Things as they change. The warmth has come. The doors have opened. Flower and song Embroider ground and air, lead me Beside the healing field …
Spring
Ah, spring—and how it so naturally, effortlessly inspires poetry! Here's one that arrived just this morning, as I was gazing out my south-facing window, through tender branches, to the majesty of Bear Peak and the Flatirons on the western horizon ... Spring's warm-cool quiet potency: leaf-buds like green haiku, unfolding ... * …
There Is But One
Easter Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise Without delays, Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise With him mayst rise: That, as his death calcined thee to dust, His life may make thee gold, and much more just. Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part With all thy art. The cross taught all wood to resound his name, Who bore the same. His stretched sinews taught …
The Rhythm of My Heart
Please Call Me By My True Names Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow — even today I am still arriving. Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to …