The Hollow (10)
birch roots
turned stilts
a hollow in the shape of a stump
desire path
deer cutting across
this trench of a trail
raised high in a claw
of upturned roots
an ordinary rock
smooth sandstone
the empty seas of the first
great extinction
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
The Hollow (8)
under the green oaks
all the colors of flame
tupelo
too cold to move
the red eft shivers
when I stroke its back
I lift my eyes
to the hillside
dead and dying mountain laurel
a midnight-blue wasp
its white-tipped antennae
palpating the ground
The Hollow (7)
the descent beckons
in three directions
old charcoal haul roads
crossroads deep in moss
a ladder of fungi climbs
a nearby snag
namaste means
I bow to the divine in you
lightning-struck oak
it’s not true
that lightning never strikes twice
spears of heartwood
The Hollow (6)
they must love the milk
that makes them so bad-tasting
milkweed bugs
memorial bench
all the young trees
it shelters now
the fog still lingers
in a funnel spider’s web
deertongue grass
the “creep” in “creeper”
battened to a locust trunk
by a thousand tentacles
The Hollow (5)
ark ark
so many ways of saying here
in Raven
the aging spruces
still stand where we planted them
their insurgent roots
rings of mushrooms
between the lines of trees
one woodfern waving
shaggy manes
imagine the sweet release
of autodigestion
The Hollow (4)
in the purple-stemmed
jungle of pokeweed
last year’s skeletons
goldenrod meadow
forty acres and a wren
the somewhere else
that is also here
ridge after ridge
too big to hide
the spider draws in her legs
and turns to gemstone
The Hollow (3)
glossy orange
to mark the hatchet-cut scars
property line
beyond the line trees
the same old view
chestnut oak seedling
“leave no trace”
only my footprints now
where spring beauties bloomed
black locust grove
the leaf miners have laid bare
a rich vein of sky
The Hollow (1)
autumn equinox
a mosquito takes its first steps
walking on water
where water sits
at the head of the hollow
a bench for reflection
the not-rightness of it
this vernal pool collecting
autumn leaves
ecdysis
empty husks of former lives
sink into the mud
Scientist
I see nothing on my own
no plain meaning
think of the power
of the microscope
to find a thing not as I expect
but dangerous as a body
7 March
paper birch trees can only bend
so far before they break
under the weight of freezing rain
rhododendron leaves
tough as old scrolls are stripped
by starving deer
but some always resprout from the roots
having who knows how many
lifetimes of practice
Leaf Letter [screenplay]
Dear
ground,
thank you for
always being there
for us. In my dreams,
sometimes you aren’t and
I go on falling until I wake.
Thank you for letting us sleep.
Thank you for your enormous
reserves of darkness, which
we have been burning to
keep the darkness at
bay, ashes to ashes.
Thank you for
letting us
all fall
Shifting ground
however I sign and swear
word by word what have I not altered
from one private doubt I descend
to a private land
and buy a pig like a physician
feeling her pulse
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