Woods Walk, Late October

Ice in, steam out.

The scratch of air

Spiriting the lungs,

Fogging the trail.

Blue sky blazes a path

All the way

To the stubby

Bone of moon.

And at your feet,

Below the decay,

Gray fists of granite

Knuckle up 

From the ground

Immovable, difficult, intractable,

Like these darkening days.

Filling Out Forms at Fifty

This was not my idea.

I had something else in mind —

Not this scramble of codes

And hodgepodge of names and dates,

This alphabet soup.

This was not in The Plan.

Or was it?

This is how to get better:

Accept the assignment,

Follow directions,

Complete the task,
Move it along.

Halloween, 2006

Two daughters,

The younger a pirate,
The older a witch,

Together,

And yet their own,

So much their own,

Scurry up the walkway,

Little voices announcing,

“Trick or Treat.” 

Mine. Ours. Theirs.

Moments. Days. Years.

The time ticks — or tricks.

Tonight’s rare, mild wind blows.

Clouds creep across a half moon.

You watch from the curb, 

Knowing, suddenly and sadly,
They are not yours to keep.

One is six, the other is nine.

They’re filling their bags
One house at a time.

October, New England

When you deliver
Your promise,

No climate, no day,

No tropical paradise

Or Provencal locale

Can match your beauty.

Your skies contain

Cobalt blue

And errant wisps of cloud

Placed there to please the eye.

“Sweater weather,” we locals

Call it, noting the cool air

And warm sun,

A perfect pitch and pivot

Between light and dark,

Life and death,

Fecundity and decay,

Keeping the heart on edge,

Enough to call forth

Its truest truths.

Heart Muscle Memory

The heart gets

Ahead of the head.

So be it.

Winding downhill

At the turn of day.

So be it.

No regrets,

To love as you love,

Mushy as it is,
A kind of
Scatteration of emotion.

You gave it away, freely.

There is no subtraction there —
Only addition.

You gave it away in moments,

Little things, swerves of action,

And came up short somehow.

The whole arc of things

Imploring the head

To slow down,
But the heart says: Don’t.