•
The hazelnut tree, the old Corylus cornuta, is yellow rain beyond my window. The warm glow of dripping candles, the fringed hair of some ever living willow. It is the aftermist of an ocean wave, and riverbank leaves decaying in water. As I look at the hazelnut I forget about winter, because with those delicate catkins come…
•
Low winter light buried by snow, all sounds threaded in gracile knots, while the trees drip, while we tingle with silence, we breath again, as though we have come up for air in a world that was once underwater.
•
What I want to know is, when will it be enough? When will the fields be safe? The sun caught in the grasses, and the deer, silent in the dry fall wind, following shadows to the yellow oak tree, everything still mysterious at mid-afternoon, And the throat-soaked crow songs, like every moment is heavy with the abruptness…
•
The sky is not empty. Not yet, but soon. Inside the wind is a Turkey-Vulture. Wings stroked by clouds, against blue that is steady, or moving, or both; the swishing silence of deep ocean, where perhaps the Turkey-Vulture escapes the songs of smaller birds, songs that writhe in his throat with longing. What might he himself sing?…
•
How can the vastness of stars be absorbed into earth? Borne upwards, torn sideways, woven into valleys? So sings the nighthawk, to whom the air holds no vastness, only the fragrance of Sitka alder, of subalpine fir, and soil drained by steady, cliffside winds. He surges down, where lupine, yarrow, and bulrush breathe through gravel, and nighthawk…
•
Please. Don’t forget there are stars. Sometimes I look at the sky, at the sunset red along the treetops, and I feel nothing at all. I’m not really sure where this nothing comes from. All I know is that if I keep staring, just keep watching the sun, then something will stir, and, once…
•
Where, wind, do you come from?From the curve of waterfalls?From the chill of low, wet valleys?Do the rocks know? The boulders below the stream, and moss-heavy on the shore? Wind and breeze, do you come from the moon,from tree branches at dusk,or do you come from ferns that toss and rustle and climbup the rocky chests of…