Candles

I wipe her fevered brow.
I'm not sick says she.
I know, But I'll bring tea.

I find her pulse,
So steady now,
belies the tempest in her chest.
Here, I've brought tea.

I light candles on the chiffarobe,
looking at the long night
and pour the tea.

We've come this far and so many years.
Why not one more night?
Now forgotten, the tea.

The candles have gone out
like my kin, one by one.
Now grown cold, the tea.

I would not have seen

If I had not stirred
Stretched
Roused so early
From my warm soft bed
Cat cuddled to my flank
Ecstatically purring
And licking my hand,
If I had not roused so early
I would not have seen the moon
Resting behind clouds of tattered lace
Going down in the west
And the morning star
Ah, Venus
Glittering at the eastern horizon
I would not have seen the clouds
Ambling slowly across the deep black
And big ol’ moon throwing light all all across them
I would not have seen
The sunrise
From 696 east bound
With a thousand other commuters
Raising our visors
To behold
The sun announcing its regal arrival
From soft gray of a dove’s wing
To gentled yellow
And slipping to soft pink
And exploding to white
Burning away all color
If my dreams had not disturbed me so
I would have been all the poorer
For not having beheld that moon
That Venus
That sunrise
That dazzled my heart to breathlessness
For wonder of His hand

Simple Pleasures

I am given over
These short chilly days of autumn
To simple pleasures.
Sitting on the tiny porch,
Ruby Cabernet sparkling in glass,
Watching the sun caress the trees
With slanting yellow light
While black capped chickadees
dash to and fro
Stealing sunflower seeds
From a cornucopia of feeders.

If I sit long enough
My backside will tale the tale
Of the hard chair and
The trees will shift their wardrobe
From brilliant green
To orange and gold and russet
Till at last, with a sigh
The leaves surrender to the season
And slip to the earth
Carpeting the withered grass
Rustling and whispering to each other.

Crows will call raucously
voices rusty with early frost
And high overhead
beneath the feathers of white cirrus clouds
Ragged V-s of honking geese
Stream southward
Encouragement in their wings
South, south, south,
In every beat of wing.

I watch the lake stir and ruffle
As an October breeze runs
Its chilly hand across the surface
And fish below the water,
that shivered to diamonds,
Swim half a beat slower.

I am given over to simple pleasures
As my joints foretell my own autumn
In my sixth decade,
And the cabernet is all the more wonderful
Know the brevity of its beauty,
Rubies sparkling in my hand.

in winter

In winter, beneath the snow
the snow
beneath the snow
just there, see?
It is spring.
just there beneath the snow.
it lies, catatonic earth.
breaths so long and slow,
one moonrise at a time.
see? it lies sleeping.
Earth, cold and dead?
No, slumbering, just there
heart beating one sunrise at a time
see?
Pause and watch, watch now...
see?
Icicles like swords at every eave.
Snow in mountainous drifts.
Air like steel in the nostrils.
Soil hard as banker’s promises
water, water, flinty, dazzled in the sun
see? watch!
Within the maple’s gray branch
a bud full of green leaves and shade.
and in the bulb, the frozen tulip
dreams its shades and brilliance
and the chickadee,
recalls in the crack of a seed,
sweet sustenance.

See? See!
Just there, spring
Just there, a frenzy of life
Watch
And see

Jenny's Ode (for my daughter)

She’s sixteen
with her mother’s eyes,
deep
coffee colored pools .

And her mother’s brown hair,
silk fine and given to curls
in the summer’s humid turning.

She teases me-
My hair, or lack thereof,
An antonym to hers,
Is fair game.

After all, I mock myself,
Too tall for my hair,
Too young for my age,
Too happy to be her father.

She circles her friends around her,
Moths to the light,
Birds in flight.
All elbows and giggles,
Just this awkward side of being women,
Having done the blissful oblivion of childhood.

Still wanting to play but
Trying to pretend she’s too all-that for games,
In her heart trying to grow too soon.

I ache to tell her
Hold on to sixteen, the dreamy,
The intoxicating innocence,
That is its own reward.

One week her legs ache with
An epiphyseal stretch
And next, it’s her heart,
Pining for a boy who has not yet
Even held her hand.

Life seems impossibly luminous,
Stretching ahead a countless dizzying chain
of dazzling days.
Each one greeted with naiveté and charm.
Each sleepy-eyed day dawning
At noon or later.
Each soft evening
Leaning into tomorrow.

Shepherded by books,
The music of her day
And my offerings of Fogelberg or Beethoven
And the inevitable advice
‘when I was a boy’
Which makes her catch her breath
With my tales of reckless fun
For
I too was once immortal.

Now I find
Mortality in my bones-
That ache not with growth
But groan with age.

And yearn to pass my meager wisdom,
My paltry store of myself
To her and to her and to her
For in her later days, she will not want to hear
Any astringent I told you so.
It will not pass my lips
Like bitter water.

So daughter mine,
Gifts come in many packages.
One day the sun wraps one up
In swaying queen Anne’s lace
and sweet scented pink soapwort,
picked from the roadside
While we dallied by a wetland of swaying cattails,
Purple loosestrife and tiger lilies.
The next, a lake and your friends,
Or a book that’s so deep you nearly drown and
Unbecome yourself for days on end.

The gift may come in a sentence
From someone you love.
Beyond loving, from a place that you least expect it,
In sparse humble words
That lean against each other for safety.

Your dad knows little of being a woman-girl
but
He knows a lot about life.

This is his gift to you.

My life
And my love
And all that I am.

And this is my gift to you.

That I love you without reckoning,
Without any reason,
With all the fibrous tendrils and cells of my body,
With every inhale and exhale,
With pulsations madly beneath my skin,
With every tingly neuron sending endorphins
Racing when I see you,
This father loves you.

And this father loves you

Still
not knowing how I came to love you,
Save for watching you grow up,
Save for tucking you in,
And waking you.
Save for taking in your generous smile
And welcome laugh.

Save for reading you stories
Till you could read them yourself.

For holding you when you were sad
And rejoicing, to see you take flight
on a tiny two wheeler, set free from gravity
On an endless flight down the pitted sidewalks,
The sun burned, leaf shaded
Mulberry purpled sidewalks
Of summer.

Friends

twilight creeps thru tangled wood where once a robin sang. 

through twig and leaf , o'er branch and bole where velvet moss did hang. 

 where feet trod earth and flowers birthed

 a new light of their own, 

though pathless, deep, and silent still

 the way therein is shown. 

 the fawn blends into shadow, the fox lies in the shade,

 and I, as wild as any, 

sought that which was not made. 

 amid the oak, madrone and fir, 

the buckeye and the bay, 

my heart yearned on for paradise, 

for light at end of day.

 the match flares bright, 

a flickering light, and touches wick to flame

 and shadows shrink away from me

 as fire does darkness tame. 

 the fire is bright now, 

in my breast where desire and secrets lie

and seeking light, within my dark bid fair companions,

 come now, nigh. 

 before us, uncertainty and behind, the deeper dark. 

beside us only friendship just kindled from a spark. 

 come friend, and dance a while with me 

And arm in arm we'll twine

 and merry make the evening though darkness crowd our time.

 and merry find the morning 

as we dance till faint first blush 

of that dawn that comes aborning cross the meadows, green and lush. 

 for it’s friends that bring us gladness 

and hold our sorrow near 

and friends that bring us comfort when burdened, filled with fear . 

and friends that carry us o'er 

that far darkness and water deep and friends

 that bend to hold us and close our secrets keep.

Hillside Dream I

In a tiny cabin clinging to the emerald edge
of a lush flower strewn meadow
the pale weave of Queen Anne’s lace
bobbing golden poppies
nodding at the breeze
strolling through the purple thistles
and red clover that enticed
the sweet drowsing bees
to dance a mother may I
on the deep warm air
that stirred the golden hairs on my forearm
resting in the sun on the worn wooden railing
splintering with the rise and fall of seasons
of sun and rain and knife edge frost and there,
with the meadowlarks aria,
and the bickering Stellar’s jays
and insistent tattoos of a pileated woodpecker
hammering his way into spongy old bark
and the haze of early morning fog
yet clinging to the dark pond
stirring with water skimmers
and dragonfly nymphs
there I took a breath in with my eyes
as if I had been drowning in the dark dawn
took a breath of this great blessing of stout oak
and leaning fir and long green grass
a lady bug wandering amid my arm hairs
smelled the heat rising around me
with every beat
and gorged on the warm air again
of my heart
scudding gravid clouds
at the horizon shedding promises
of rain at the grass glinting greenly
and took in that last breath
and thought

this is the only life I’ve ever known.

God, what a thing you have done.