retreat

watercolor of Quenby by Jeanne

stepping back from chaos

looking up with awe

innocence sees parent twinkle in the eye

against the stars

the glow of the moon

and smells the tribe its own

breathing in its sweetness

expelling the sigh of contentment

life’s pink cheek

its tender skin…

Carpe Diem…gently

Carpe Diem
by Jim Harrison

Night and day
seize the day, also the night —
a handful of water to grasp.
The moon shines off the mountain
snow where grizzlies look for a place
for the winter’s sleep and birth.
I just ate the year’s last tomato
in the year’s fatal whirl.
This is mid-October, apple time.
I picked them for years.
One Mcintosh yielded sixty bushels.
It was the birth of love that year.
Sometimes we live without noticing it.
Overtrying makes it harder.
I fell down through the tree grabbing
branches to slow the fall, got the afternoon off.
We drove her aqua Ford convertible into the country
with a sack of red apples. It was a perfect
day with her sun-brown legs and we threw ourselves
into the future together seizing the day.
Fifty years later we hold each other looking
out the windows at birds, making dinner,
a life to live day after day, a life of
dogs and children and the far wide country
out by rivers, rumpled by mountains.
So far the days keep coming.
Seize the day gently as if you loved her.

Jim Harrison, “Carpe Diem” from Dead Man’s Float. Copyright © 2016 by Jim Harrison. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, http://www.coppercanyonpress.org.

What sleeps below in November?

painting by Neil Waldman

.

spotlight stars, moon, clouds

hills, mountains, coast, trees, sea, spires

energy’s reflections

American (Field Guide)

watercolor  by Mary Shephard

.

The American

April 4, 2017 (Field Guides)

American

I am a continent
surrounded by two mighty oceans

a middling zone
feet at equator

skies with moon and sun;
earthly mountains and vales

dessert creatures underground
flower blossoms blowing in the wind

majestic and humble
all at once an altar for my God.

quicksilver
all rights

Field Guide
Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in the most precious element of all,
I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water
at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,
hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.
I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page
in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know
where to look for the good parts.
Tony Hoagland
in Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

If only plugs could speak…

photo by way of frizztext

“plug me in!”
he’d shout

cuddle me in
to power and heat

listen to the tunes
feel the waves

find rest
your conduit

link to the stars
tide of the moon

your energy key.

A Fisherman in Heaven

The Rod
The Moon
The Deep

Rod points aft, to moon:
throws itself on sea that waves
on path to heaven!

Pattern # 61 Wolf Howl

Wolf carved by Frank Scotti

Wolf howl scowls at moon –
Fangs’ glow summons hungry pack
Gathering of brood!

Riddle#28 The Moon

Now that the moon is out of a job
it slides over the forest-all those
million still violins before they are
carved-and follows those paths only air
ever uses.
William Stafford

Yellow moon:
amber air alert;
cats’ eye
in the sky
misty message from on high.
I bow, submissive.
(shadorma)
(3-5-3-3-7-5-)

Riddle#20 Fickle Spring

it
was
vernal
equinox:
snow in Austerlitz:
blue flakes laugh at crocus shoots, blue
with cold, not dew; fickle Spring, fickle earth, fickle moon.

While We Sleep

How dare the day change at Midnight!
Are we not the author of dawn?
The painter of the stars, the guardian of the moon?
Is it we who smile on earth, in sunbeams, at the dawn?

Or are we simply grains of sand reflecting light;
Grinding slowly into earth,
Its precious minerals?