each day i let the same trapped
dark-eyed junco
out the barn loft window


i will no longer ask you the reasons why

the hermit to himself



leave the rake out in the garden
you'll be there tomorrow

speak only with your father
or else let the house its silence

rest in the myrtle by the dogwood
while the birds are quiet

in the first heat of the year,
the sun will let you

forget love for a while

sit with your cloud-eyed mangy cat
she's a better hermit than you'll ever be

walk to the swamp and stop by the pine to
collect rodent teeth from its resident owl

go lightly into the evening
with a head full of flowers

to give to your oldest friend;
old beckoner, sleep.

To have every bird in the woods

finally sing and I am known to it

is all the morning I ask

To see the flower garden

move as a dress on your body

is all the day I ask

To have the stars rise from the river

and you not think of me as crazy

has to be the night ahead

Bob Arnold

Longhouse

in the sudden spring cold
that shrivels the magnolia blooms
the stones gather day warmth
and pass it to my hands

sun shines through
a black shafted
blue jay feather
stuck in the braid

i return to joy

the wind touches
everything
       all day
      



the light sometimes
caught in
       the daffodils




thoughts
of far and away
go out to rest among
        the stones

water's flowing

the sound

comes toward my home

know what i'll promise you?

skies be bright & clear for you

that's what i'll promise you

the sound is fading out

it's more like five sounds

FREEDOM

sound is really fading out

it's more like five sounds

Chippewa

quiet and far

you should go quiet and far
when the best thing
you can do for your friends
is to leave them alone

there should be some sense
that you are learning anything
from the ineffable moments,
that they don't just stack over you
until you can't see the past

you should take out your old feathers
when you've gone quiet and far
and learn a thing or two about rivers
and the fishes that breathe in them

it could be that there is no calm
way of knowing precisely what to do
with the years, and that they'll
sink in lazily despite your concerns
that they're not shaping up quite right

you should hope that the persistent
growth and decay of notions in your mind
will one day provide a suitable soil
to sprout some respectable food and flowers

it should not surprise you that
the voice you trust the most
is none other than
the winds

she doesn't lie

Lagunitas to Bolinas

"The feeling of the country settled into him, the great emptiness and age of it, the feel of westward mountains old as time and plains as wide as forever and the blue sky flung across. The country didn't give a damn about a man or an animal. It let the buffalo and the antelope feed on it and the gophers dig and the birds fly and the men crawl around, but what did it care, being one with time itself?... ... Looking back, it was as if time ran into itself and flowed over, running forward from past times and running back from now so that yesterday and today were the same. Or maybe time didn't flow at all but just stood still while a body moved around in it."

~The Big Sky,  A.B. Guthrie, Jr.

The Last Resort