sparkle

The best man is like water. Water is good it benefits all things and does not compete with them. It dwells in lowly places that all disdain. This is why it is so near to Tao. ~Lao Tzu

By the Water

I will always live by water
It is more than a drink
A bath
A pool to swim in

Water sustains me
Reminds me
Its ebb and flow
Cove’s stillness
Ocean storm violence
Have been here much longer than I
Longer than any of us

The amoeba the shark
Even the desert scorpion
Would not be
Without a drop

But that’s too deep
Too unfathomable
Will drive me to distraction

I walk by shorelines
Lake River Bay Sound Ocean
I am alive
I am grateful for the peace
I find in the murmur
By the water

hoary frost

Hoar-Frost

In the cloud gray mornings 
I heard the herons Flying 
And when I came into my garden, 
My silken outer-garment 
Trailed over withered leaves. 
A dried leaf crumbles at a touch, 
But I have seen many Autumns 
With herons blowing like smoke 
Across the sky. 

Amy Lowell 

 

For those of you who know me, even a bit, you know my prior couple of days contained more mayhem than usual. More is to come. Changes on the horizon.

Hoary Frost

For now it is morning.
The frost sugars the grass and leaves.
Winter birds call to each other
and my little girl sings,
entertains herself with nonsense
that makes perfect sense to her.
Videogames punch and groan in the next room,
and a crayon scratches across paper,
across a plastic table’s roughed surface.

It is a November morning
like any November Saturday
that has ever come.
A little late and bright,
but early stillness reigns.
My warm coffee to my mouth,
traffic rolling by the big road
beyond the barer trees,
and my house reluctant
to remove the covers of sleep.

november rain

This is not a Guns & Roses song.

After five and a half years in southeastern Virginia, I have an enduring habit of comparing the seasonal weather changes to my lifetime of living and studying New England’s degrees of daily weather changes.

Some are monumental, a sudden ice storm overnight after a day when it was in the sixties. Some are so minute, it is the scent of an electro-magnetic charge in the atmosphere.

Yesterday, here in Virginia, a humid temperature hovered at eighty degrees. The leaves were more on the ground than trees from the prior days’ breezes.

This morning there is wet iron in the air. It finally feels like November to this old New Englander at heart.

Even the wisteria on the swing set is in mourning for the sun.

poem

October

I am up before dawn to send one

son off to middle school.

The first crept out the door

to high school in the dark.

This one talks too much,

too much enthusiasm before

I have poured my coffee.

With a reminder, he stops, briefly,

Oh, right.

He complies with order to brush his teeth.

Then he slams the front door,

no goodbye.

I pull back the curtains

to pink golden light

yawning the dawn

upon burnished beech leaves.

The tree glows brighter, more golden.

My honey creaks down the stairs

slowly, a two hundred pound cat

reluctantly stalks the day.

He rumbles,

She doesn’t want me to wake her,

she only wants mommy today.

She is usually daddy’s girl.

When he is home from work,

he is her heart.

But for the past day,

she has been stuck to me:

a monkey baby, koala,

a litter of opossum grown too big

for marsupial carry.

She clings, she cuddles, she coos

I yuv you, mommy.

I ascend, I go in.

She smiles sleepily,

a smile that says, I won.

And with barely a glance,

she rises, scoots right by me.

I open her curtains,

and the beech tree glows deeper.

The dawn is almost complete.       .

Look, isn’t the yellow tree beautiful

in the sunrise?

Her tip-tip sleepy steps change

direction on the carpet.

She slips in front of me and presses

her forehead to the window.

She sucks her fingers rhythmically.

With a nod against the glass,

she agrees.

This is the moment.

This is how we love.

I hope she remembers.