Bark Ode
It’s only in strong sun
that the winter woods resemble
a bar-coded label.
Today is gray.
I pause to stroke the bark
of a diseased chestnut oak,
ridges kinked and folded,
ordinarily straight lines
impossible to read.
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Breaking through
Fresh holes gape in a maple trunk,
as if from some Roman
soldier’s lance.
The new, smooth ground of ice and sleet
hasn’t quite set;
I keep breaking through.
Cardinals peck at the plowed road,
gathering faux teeth
for their reliquaries.
Snow plow
Our neighbor plows
down-hollow and back,
his wife riding shotgun.
The old plow truck hasn’t left
the mountain in years,
bound to its one road.
In each yard,
it raises white ramparts
from the fallen enemy.
Primary school
Children in the woods:
at first I mistake their distant yelps
for coyotes.
When did I stop climbing trees?
Views are best when seasoned
with a little terror.
Once I found a dead cicada,
stuck half-way out
of its former self.
Lay of the land
The long, low ridges
in the blue distance are edged
with bands of yellow.
Otherwise, the clouds
are heavy as an old
wool blanket.
I pull the shades for a nap,
a wakeful woodchuck thumping
under my floor.
Close to home
All this time,
six well-used deer beds
just out of sight from the porch!
The old outhouse
half-fallen into its hole—
how long has the roof been gone?
Even the snowy hillside,
the way it bends the trees’
harp-string shadows…
Walking the line
High winds. I press an ear
to the trunk of a ridge-top oak
and hear nothing but wind.
My footprints in the snow
are more than erased;
they’re raised up, scattered like ashes.
The woodpecker must hear any sound
an oak can make.
It taps out a response.
Nuthatch
Nuthatch at the window,
probing under the sill
for frozen bugs and pupae,
one eye on the glass
where, behind the bare trees,
my bare face swims up—
that odd ice
on a sideways pond
with its year-round winter…
Primary sources
One line for all
the caravans of the internet—
its wavy shadow.
Looking at bird tracks,
I feel a certain anxiety
of influence.
I chew on a piece
of congealed black cherry sap
from a head-sized burl.
January noon
In the owl’s flight
as in the conifers it left:
that silence.
It’s enormous,
the frozen carcass of a cow
eaten by chickadees.
O trees like forks,
the sky too is a dish
best served cold.
Things to do with human bones in the Neolithic
Deflesh them with bone knives.
Let the wolves and ravens deflesh them.
Gather them into skin bags and bury them under the hearth.
Feed them beer.
Dig them up every fall and dance with them.
Dig ditches around them so the uninitiated cannot get too close.
Build mounds over them so the otherworld can ascend and be closer to us.
Organize them by size and type.
Rearrange them into new, mash-up ancestors.
Break them so they will not follow us in our dreams.
Suck out the marrow so their spirits will protect us in our dreams.
Burn them and place them in jars of clay decorated with rows of pits, as from missing teeth.
Erect stones around them in a circle so they will remember us who stand in the light.
Scottish beasts
tapping & tugging
at the side of the tent
early morning wind
around the headland
from the seal sculpture
this one moves
at the Osprey Center
a crowd gathers to watch
squirrels on the feeder
no does to herd
the solitary stag haunts
a caravan park
blood-red sunset
I raise the midge net
to take a nip
with each wingbeat
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