i leave my tea cup out all night
in the morning i drink moonlight

Three Poems on the Solitude of Autumn Wind

a windstorm in autumn

can do the strangest things

with candle light



                ~



it is good when it is dark

and the wind is blowing

so that when you look to the stars

you mistake the few small passing clouds

for subtle darknesses in the universe

that slowly shift



                ~



not even the restless winds

can stir my granitic soul;

my only hope is for

a thoughtless autumn

in the golden crown-fire

of sunrise in the fir tops

if my mind is a meadow

i am at the half-illumined edge

i am walking into the forest

away from the sun into the forever of morning


let whoever may

enter that meadow freely

i'll come back someday

from A Private Fall

It's possible autumn is a tomb

out of which a child is born.

We feel a secret joy

and we tell no one!

R.B.  

Breaking

Did I believe I had a clear mind?

It was like the water of a river

flowing shallow over the ice.  And now

that the rising water has broken

the ice, I see that what I thought

was the light is part of the dark

W.B.

go

the sun is setting on the years

the highways we unraveled

are recoiling in the dusk



must i always weep

for the joys i have had?



go easy, wanderer

your outreaching

is noble, and beautiful at least



"the most sublime act is

to put another before you"



if the wind is the usher of time

then the wind is our friend



uncoil a path,

and go before me

i'll go laughing in the dark

and waving grasses

for when the dawn comes around

let the good times roll

where are the glories of the years?

i caught it in the perfect of a day of rain

and the late light when it cleared

walking with you in the evening

like i've lived it and can finally

die smiling

what hides in the years?

this glorious unending

oaf god

o Artemis

go put her in a cloud

but she rains my water

and i cannot help myself

send her under ground

i will sink below the salt of the sea

o Artemis of mud 

and feather fletches

can you explain to me

the magnetism of rivers?

i will rest if you let me
where the cool waters come together

"be one be weak keep moving"

men i once admired
are courting ladies
i knew as children

it is said that tobacco
will kill a demon
incapable of reconcile

i'll send my fears downriver,
and hide their scent
with the southern winds

i want to keep my hands
out of your bad times
but keep them rough and ready

i want to trust again
in the ability of
being trustworthy

it is better sometimes
to smoke the demon
and smile with a toast

to the unknown dawn

the measure of open space

Here and there
you build a
fitting structure

to rhyme
with what's around it

             the
             rocks
                    the meadow grass
                                     the trees
                                          the water

and learn to
leave intact
the wet roots
of the swamp oak
                    and the alder

& the trails
of the deer
                    up the ridgeway
used these
30,000 years

ed sanders

joanne kyger

indigo flower wellspring anti-blues

“Hold on to your divine blush,

 your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. 

Once you're brown, you'll find out you're blue. 

As blue as indigo.

 And you know what that means. 

Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.”- TR

there is a wellspring
somewhere the cats
won't even climb

its lineaments
are not shared with
the characteristics of space

indigo flowers
are always stooping
their heads to drink there

                 ~

sometimes i forget about it
and i take my hammock down
and just cocoon there on the ground

where the chickens are in a pile
in the sun, taking turns
to watch for hawks

but hey! i got bone flutes
i've got to find a way
to play to raise the moon

i got secret cats to track;
reel 'em in with finger magic
and string 'em in the hammocks

i got fox-gloves
to stick my fingers in
or my penis when i'm frisky

i got whole peninsulas to map;
of forests, dunes and grasses
and a millions yellow flowers on top

ah, but i've also got space-time
that jabs my mind
with its endlessness;
with what little of it is left

but o! its nothing; mostly
i got the shape of the sun
to stare at through the fog
and spring water to drink where
the indigo sighs

the eerie way the hawks are screaming

the ghostly shining of webs in the rosemary
the queer shivering of the shadows in the apple-leaves

the thunder on my mind

o how i used to run to mother in the storms;
a shame i've grown

i am as frightened as the day i was born

aphelion

aphelion; 

the farthest away

it is dark, as though 

i'm shooting arrows into black water

on the new moon at midnight

o 

it is distant

it is dark

i am far

against all odds

love is possibly the only anti-entropic force;
the yearning of molecules in a void of disorder

the sheer odds of which are
incomprehensible to the scholars of chance
those who've guessed the scale of things

love; the only resistor
to the pull of black holes

against all astronomical odds
i love you

diphthong

i fell asleep
to the
diphthong of the wind

woke yawning woe,
found light took hours leaving,
destroyed our rooms sounds           and
flew your coop sweetly

tropos

i should have known my crumbs
would be the old words
is it divination
if its only useful
after the fact?


i've hardly got a shadow at noon
the sun has reached its limit
of how high its willing to go
it knows to turn around
and head back where it came from


my fingers are wearing down
and i get tiny bits of steel in my blood
it takes three days for them to heal
but in the mean time
i feel closer to everything i touch

florida headlines found poem

PLANET LIKELY TO BE TOO HOT BY THE END OF THE CENTURY

HUNGER/CURIOSITY LED DEER TO PUT HEAD IN DORRITOS BAG

NAZI LEADERS LONG-LOST DAIRY OFFERS NEW INSIGHTS

FIGHTING TERRORISM WILL BE A NEVER-ENDING BATTLE

STUDIES SUGGEST WOLVES MIGHT BE SMARTER THAN DOGS

10 ELDERY WOMEN ESCAPE LIMO FIRE

MANY JOBS STILL REQUIRE SKILLS

GENEROSITY BEGINS AT HOME

rooms

i must make it home
i left the first fireflies
streaming in the tall grass
of the warming evenings


i've got to map those rains
and the raspy noises that
i hear in the minutes just
before the early birds

i knew i forgot to thank
that bull frog for showing
me the worth of the ability
to whoop your lover home


i'm shooing spiders
from my inner room
failing to realize
they attract the birds from yours


somehow the great distances
i will go are tiny when i hold
them to the sidereal of time
in my orbit of your soul

still i've got to catch

that late light through the leaves

or i won't know how

to smile when i die

i like the spiders but

why do i insist they go?

i'm leaving shrugs and moans

where my pen should be

the fact of the matter is
i am guided by the rooms
that i will build, made of windows
made of letting in the light

thought i'd wake up in the night
when the cold sky opened
with some sort of knowing

thought this morning
my soul would finally cleave

thought the poppies would 

come up this year
and bloom today

but they didn't

and so       just now

i thought about your hands

and realized they are exactly 

the size of the rain's

phenology

yesterday the crab-apple by the house
today the lilac by the garden
i calculate star geometry
and anticipate the dogwood

me, i'm looking for the perfect stone
in the dark of rain at noon
and to measure my fortunes
by the roughness of my hands

princess light

only one answer

I stood in the flowery dawn
(the summer triangle rising
just before the light)
and asked my question plainly

"Just how many poems
can one man compose
on the subject of spring?"

I heard the hyacinths blooming

Black Sun

To awaken is to return to being
to be re-lit in a dark cubicle;
the first steps that I take
in this re-being are tentative.

To again be in such darkness
is a sailing without compass.
I have my compass by my side,
the dark expanse of a black sun

which is your hair,
inverse lighthouse, lightless,
that gives me direction
with the gypsy light it beams.


                   

                                                -- J.C.M.N.

Swamp Spring

slow crawl home by the semaphores of spring

the swamp inhales all my old woes

and i sigh smiling quietly into the polyp clouds

the cherry blossoms buzzing!

all day, single petals tumbling in troves

even into full flower-moonlight

with that hush-murmer of midnight;

dark geese that pass north

and an owls sounding

as if to measure

the forest night

i'll go sleep out in the creeping myrtle at noon

dream of stars that decay on mountainsides

(star-mountains i cannot forget)

and the ones we cannot see in daylight

wake to the pastel body of spring beside me

and whisper my demands;

make my mind a spiral of blooms!

the dogwoods umbrals,

the forsythias yellow-fire, 

the magnolias lotus loomings

o make me the tiny petals

that i may know the orgasm of abscission!

i want to tongue the anthers!

i want to dust the stigmas!

she only stared my blue eyes teary,

stood and walked away,

her colors blending in the bright wet blur

How to die in the Mountains

When lost in the mountains

consider yourself lucky

and make friends with the stones



When lost in the mountains

don't be so quick to find doom

plenty of ancient chinese men

died with smiles on their faces

under some wind broken pine




When lost in the mountains

don't forget to blush before the birds

as cute as you think you are

they could still show you the proper way to die

and help you avoid any unpleasant experiences



When lost in the mountains

find the highest peak

from there you can listen

to the strange sounds from the city

from there you can see

just what you left behind

from there the wind will speak

in cool tongues if its chosen you

and if it has it will carry your shattered soul

to the place inside the mountain

where old hearts go to die

where dirt is a language

where the uplift of mountains

is the only way to get to heaven

where the slow murmur of the continents

sliding on molten earth is all you will ever hear

for the rest of those thousand lives you know you'll live

if you've managed to get

lost in the mountains

Last Years Worm Moon Mother-Son Poem Exchange

Son:


hugely orange worm moon rising
set the earth again to moving
--the writhing of her worms

flourish! dirt-movers
take to dancing your
thawed ground ways!

incite the songs of spring!






Mother:


Crocuses fully bloomed
Daffodils bursting
Pansies firmly planted on the porch
Rebirth renew relief
Rejoice! in the constancy of her cycles






Son:


the Yellow Trumpets have sounded!
surely they know this rounding best
--those pioneers of spring

the clouds play games of light
on the waking webs of green
robins swirl their hunger-dances
my soul too, thawing
in the sun we share.






love you mom.

Death, Thou comest

when I had Thee least in mind.

-Everyman

Nicotiana

o take me death-leaf

take and press me

with your thumbs of smoke

into the earth

that I may lay with an open head

and become the hillside;

indistinguishable as dirt,

as black clouds

that pass the moon

at midnight

but the birds are singing!

it is spring!

still,

I've died this time,

relinquished my breath

with the equal night

and only with spring

was born all over

o that

deaths head hawk moth

that came and tongued the anthers

when my mind became

the comet flower

whispered something as it flew

something only heard

by the gone beyond

thus

I know

I have not gone

the curving earth

the curving earth

turns

i smoke

and lower down

a

tobacco death

at noon

the days question:

do the birds each morning

make agreements with

the wind?

hey!

mountain!

you're a sun swallower

O Stars

o stars
what can be done?

o stars
late i face the cold wind
to pee and end up staring
at your shimmering far
past the time my skin starts
cooing for the bed-warmth again

o stars
you rarely speak
in fact you're mute
the way i wish i was sometimes;
never have to try to tell a lover
where your love went
never have to hear your own
voice on the toilet in the dark
"fuck, what have i done?"
or
"i should write that letter
to my grandmother"

o stars

you always send

the same dull light

and fade just when i need you most;

at the flowering of dawn

when i can no longer hide

in the shadows of moonlight

and hope i remain

unseen before the human world

counting the silences of stars

Dried-up Sea Bottom Blues

i'm the big fool
who's laughing now?
no one i know

its like i wove
this net as if i didn't know
i'd be the one drowning in it

and not without tangling
a few beautiful creatures
in it before i sink

but oh that deep
silence at the bottom
beckons still

and the darkest blue
i've never seen
is waiting for me there

the only incongruity?
the ocean left
this lonesome place
a million years ago

Already Too Late

... Not content with extinguishing birds,
man takes arm against his own kind--
"-- he who cannot bring one green leaf into being,"
an offended goddess said.  "Somehow or other
mankind must be got rid of.
Since he has destroyed all other predators
I can do no more than let him
prey on himself till the last bone is stripped clean.
The weapons he has invented must destroy him.
Out of each violated atom he himself shall let loose
the fire of his own annihilation:

"After the fire, the darkness:
aeons of cold darkness.

"Perhaps then," said the goddess,
"I will once more smile upon the blind earth
and draw with the touch of my own skilled finger
a green cell out of the sea.
The green cell will start spinning the world again
from sunlight and long-unwakened water.
"In time there will be music
from the throats of birds and of angelic creatures
I have not yet begun to dream."

~ Peggy Pond Church

Wanderin' Stranger

This Great Unknowing

ah

now don't i feel just like

those bare trees bending

in the windy winter

rains

what a tangle i have gathered!

like the half-moon after midnight

i've gone beyond the horizon

toward a darkness that subsumes all senses;

unpierceable perfect dark

but in darknesses are mysteries

that i go wandering for

that i go seeking nets

to ravel in, in hopes

that from this tower

when i cry toward the stars

the sound 

will stir that Woman at her loom

and she will weave for me a blanket,

with the patience of the earth,

the color of my questioning

the stitching of which

i'll read in dream

and wake in light

not fit for eyes

that haven't known

the awe of action

acted in unknowing.

The Murmuring Desert

the azure berry
suddenly in morning
falls from clumped up needles
"find a bed, wait for water"

the house finch's
dip and rise, flutter
dip and rise
"my home too!"

snowfall in the distance
a ladder from the sky
obscuring unfamiliar sun
"guess your future"

dunes of sand will never stay still
the wind never chooses a direction
snow here is an exhale from the rainforest
"we move in hinging spirals, not circles"

song of the desert:
a dry patience whispering

One Glory Without Significance

The sun was gone under the wine-colored ocean,

      then the deep west fountained

unanticipated magnificences of soaring rose and heavy purple,

      atmospheres of flame-shot

color played like a mountain surf, over the abrupt coast,

      up the austere hills,

on the women talking, on the men's bent forms filling the grave,

      on the oak, on the eagle's prison, one glory

without significance pervaded the world.

Cawdor, Robinson Jeffers

The Veil

what sun do I dream of?
it blazes here, but it is brighter
or clearer always where I think
it will shine next

each day I give the wind my breath
but time is its lone rider

again this year, I will miss
the anchored blossom of flowers;
unable to map the rain
my magic is homeless
and I fear I'll never stop
until a voice indistinguishable
beckons me to rest

wild or blind?
at least I've found a peace
in the sound of my footsteps alone

yet, my hands are getting soft
so that at night, when I am lost in loves strange colors
and I feel the gaze of unknown eyes
I worry whether I am recognizable

Piñon Wind

/

days of cold + light

hunched, withdrawn land

on the new moon

a woman 

let it down

what wonder is this?

a brimming urgency of being

a call to lightfoot ways

just how could i refrain?

two voices singing

and i to return the song

i am always returning

/

Family Matters

when the deer don't come to die
the women send their husbands
to copulate with deer-wives
in hopes to generate a family
the worth of which is death;

consumption into and toward
the spirit-family.

Cloud Hidden

Alone now,
I imagine they smile:

the mountains
lost in snow

Blood Mysteries

what is man without wonder
for the blood mysteries?
blood-flow, blood-form, blood-milk

expert blood
vessel overflowing

he goes lives without knowing
his own life-form and dies how many times
under assumptions of power

i know, i listen and i've heard
its pulsing below my own heart

the darkening of the falling mind
tastes just like blood in snow

Mater

... The Great Mother, the Great Round, the Great Container, tends to hold fast to everything that springs from it and to surround it like an eternal substance. Everything born of it belongs to it and remains subject to it; and even if the individual becomes independent, the Great Mother relativizes this independence into a nonessential variant of her own perpetual being.

Enchantments Prism'd Dew

/

o waves of enchantment!

caught upon horizons

with the strangest light

just how do i become

a winter-sleeper?

o what a

wide way 

home

/

Skyline to the Sea