A New Life

You could wake up to anything.

That is the fear.

The family splintered,

The bad cell gone haywire,

The wrong turn into the tree.

You can withstand these unknowns because

You are human, and you hope.

You bring this to the game:

Your fortitude and your heart.

You now see there is only love,
Built up behind your eyes,

A truth known to your innermost self.

You have nothing else,
Because you are poor,

But the heart brings you wealth.

You cannot turn back the clock.

You can only tick with the time,

And dream of better days ahead.

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