October 19 (for Nina)

Whatever else in the world
Does not matter.
The centuries-old grudges,
The wars, the suffering, the misunderstandings
In ten thousand dark corners.
One look from this child and it all falls away ...

You have always been this way
From the moment you emerged,
Blinking, warm, and wet,
Into the glowing white light
of a Boston birthing room
Four years ago this morning
At 8 o'clock.
You embodied peace,
You emitted a light
To show us
what remains possible.

Bright Blue Bird Eating From My Hand

Descendent of dinosaurs,
this dainty delight flitters
like pure spirit in my hand.
The feel of the scratchy tickle of
the clawed foot in my seed-filled palm.
"Trust me," I try to telegraph, "and eat."
The fragile heads pecks and picks out a single seed,
then alights in a blink to a nearby skeletal branch.

Hearts

They thump along

Within our breasts,

Moving to the same

Rhythm, whether 

pope or prostitute,

Teacher or terrorist,

Lamb or lion.

The blood courses in us.

We are the blood and

The blood is in us,

No different from

one to the next.

The same valves, 

Chambers, and arteries that

Clog with our excesses are

Capable of such brightness:

Tears and joy bunch up

Inside these walls.

All beings arise from the heart.

The place of sadness and hope, 

Soul's winter and summer —

From the salmon struggling upstream

To the Peruvian peasant
On the mountainside,

We all exact a beat

That illuminates the world.

Watching a Panda Eat Bamboo at the Zoo

The pearl light of morning

Tesselates the green leaves.

A breeze stirs the wind chimes

And brings on birdsong.

He tilts his massive black-and-white head 

Quizzically at the alien hum of a passing bus,

Then turns toward the sun and seems

To swim in the dappled light

Filtering through sharp-shaped leaves.

He snaps off shoots and munches.

Between bites, he rests on his hinds,

Letting the bittersweet pass over

His fat pink tongue and into 

The blue sky of his Buddha belly.

Under Babson Farm*

   

In the distance

                                  all sea,

                                 all shades

                                 of blue ahead.

Below, a pit

                       carved by the

        hand of Man

                      and tempered

into beauty
                by Nature’s

                                 indifference.

    
The mixture of us and the Other.

                       

Seventy years have passed —

                                               and the hissing steam drills

                                              and Finnish accents

                                    echo
                         in the pit of memory,
silt in,

         turn to stone.

In the years before asphalt,

                                         they blasted and carved granite blocks

        by the schooner-full here.

                                               Off to
                                               New York,
                                               Havana,
                                               Philadelphia,

pavers and curbstones that city folk ignore

                            as they rush to greet

                                                            the evening train.

The Brooklyn Bridge,
The base of the Statue of Liberty,
Monuments to dead generals ...

                  

Now, pitch pine, shadblow, sumac, and scrub oak

heal our wounds.

                                                          
And the water-filled pit
— the great scar—

chisel-rimmed,

faithfully reflects

                               tumbling
                               cumulus
                               clouds
                               drifting
                               by

*Halibut Point State Park, Rockport, Massachusetts

The Dew

Comes in spring

When the flowers

blossom possibility.

Only then is

The breeze just right.

And the sky so

Full of promise.

You will see a sparkle

There, an essence of

What is meant to be:

As sure as this

Crashing ocean

Surf outside

my window.

—11/12/11

Last Saturday Before Sunrise

I awake at 6, thinking I had to shower, 

get dressed, rush off to the train, 

and head into the city.

Adrenaline
courses my veins,
churning the pool
of my fatigue.

I slither out of bed and, of course, my dog is up because I can hear
him shaking awake, the distinct clink of his tags emanating from the next room. 

I dress in the dark. My wife stirs.

What time is it?

Shhh, I say. Sleep.

The dog and I head out the door.
The sky is black and bruised
with the arrival
of another day —
high purple light
spilling through
a thin layer of
clouds marching east.

The air crackles with cold, and we both walk briskly. The dog charges
ahead, sniffing trees and rocks and grassy spots, marking as he goes.

The leaves of native cherry, sumac, and silver birch
frame the path to the sea.
They are still green
but darker this morning,
ready to go, as we all must.

When we get down to the water’s edge,  the ocean is as smooth 

as a good thought — unblemished, calm, and deep. 

My eyes scan the horizon, 

the wind picks up, 

and the sun cracks the surface,
breaking another day —
all red and orange and blue.
The dog and the light,
scatter on the rocks
in all directions.

Mountain Vista

Carry me, mind, imagination, soul,
Across the distance —
Into the blue and green we go,
Toward each animal, each bird,
Every blessed stone and shivering leaf.

Transport me now,
With clarity of eye
And purity of heart,
Toward fresher horizons,
Untrammeled states of mind.

What I Learned From a Rotting Stump in the Woods

Out of all the decay
Of last century's losses,
Life persists, shouting
Yes to silence all those no's.

These green shoots
In the rotting wood
Tell us nothing ever
Goes for good —

But gets drawn up
In other forms yet unborn —
The shape if your nose,
The glint in your eye,

The timbre of your voice,
Animating some far-off descendant
Inhabiting a future in which you
Now know you will play a part.

The Water Daughter (for Emma)

At eight months, she is half lake, half air,
floating as fragile as mist in her father's arms.
Startled by her sun-spangled eyes,
he sees in her blue irises
the waves rolling out of the West,
like the years already fixed and rolling out ahead.
Then her memory will be nil of this and her days will be filled
in the din and delight of an unknowable life to come.

The father wants this little girl to know that
in one swirling instant of an August afternoon in Lake Michigan
they shared their watery origins.
Fumbling as he tried to keep them both afloat,
he detected something familiar
in the angle of her nose and in the smooth
expanse of her forehead,
as he balanced every last one
of the child's cells and sighs.

On this day, in these,
her mother's Great Lake waters,
far from his Atlantic to the East,
for one blessed moment
all who had come before them,
generations heaped upon generations
strung out upon the crashing waves of Time,
kept tugging at them from the deep,
kept clutching at him for dear life.

What Gives Over to the Heart

On these sunny days here so still

This bright and breezy autumn in Massachusetts, 

Plopped down at the edge of the continent,

We look to blue sky now, beginning again

On some journey across still-green fields.

But that is fine. We are already on our way.

Until at rest we bring the bitter day

To a sweeter end on compassionate thoughts,

We gather all losses there to break

A new dawn, a new estimation of things.

Perhaps even a discussion of the paucity of language,

The way I'll attempt to describe the grackle at my windowsill,

Feeding on Kansas-grown, utility-grade sunflower seed,

All black and shiny like his eyes. He pecks away

At the green feeder in the burnt-orange light of an October Sunday.

You bet the range of time on things that mattered, after all.

You worked for wages of sweat and sawdust and now your

Feet stride across bayberry, sage, clove, and heather.

Now that time and times are done, and after that, and even after that,

The granite boulder will still still itself among the oaks.

Like a proper thought, it will continue to make no note of itself.

On Harrington Sound, Bermuda

The moon is cut in half by cloud.
The eye is tugged there.
This coral rock is 800 miles off Cape Hatteras
 — as far east as Chicago is west —
Almost as lonely out here in the Atlantic
As our pockmarked, boney
Neighbor that pulls and pushes these waters.

I exhale the dust of the grind
And ease into a mindful mode . . .
The chorus of tree frogs
Spices the air, salves the spirit.

Then, from across the Sound,
Fireworks pierce
The incessant reek-a-reek-a-reek. 
Some rebel is shouting at the sky
And rightly so because tonight is so damn
Beautiful. He keeps lighting another fuse.

The pyrotechnics go on and on like the tree frogs.
There are far too many blasts for a mutiny.
Mass murder? The bodies would be piled high by now.
Perhaps an invasion is under way over in St. George's
Near the airport.
They've seen that kind of action there before,
Though some three centuries have passed.

No, it's a yelping, happy rebel
Watching his fuses burn and
Sending signals across
The ever-moving Sound
Whose mammoth waters
Lap and swirl and heave against coral walls,
Lighted by the night's blue-white glow,
Churning in the tug of a
Cloud-enshrouded moon.