Breathing Winter

it is so still, so cold
you whisper the sounds
of breathing

you look long into the empty
sky filled with the chilled sighs
of star gazers

you wonder what it all means,
why there are heavy hands in a world
so willing to love you

and the sky that sits on the horizon
does so gently, to please you,
does that every day until you

remember that the coyote
standing on the ice, stands there for you
and a future that will love him too

Swans

they settle over the mud flats
like Concords,
bellies pink in the afterglow
and the day surrenders
to the inaccessible nights

i hear the soft bugle of mates
acquaint the young in grey flannel
with a world made for them,
a singular devotion to an unknown faith

they tilt wings chosen by angels
and drop their black paddle feet
to the salted beds of resurrection,
the cradle of a just sea

then the hush of divine stillness
as they rest illumined and infinite
under a moon of countless winters

The Blooming Hour

for Mark -

a tree comes to its treeness
and a star borrows its sparkle
from the sun for you to imagine

flowers willingly unfold their petals
when the life in them finds
their blooming hour

and the initiate becomes a shepherd
when he opens his hand to the Earth
when he is called forth

you have the sight to know the unity
in duality and feel the agony
beneath your feet

know that the world
gave you a song,
its melodies written only for you

on the day providence sat with you
by the river and you tasted the silt
from a thousand streams

Requiem for a Desert

the sun is on the plain
and nothing walks upon it

grasses shiver and the voles sleep,
vipers rest in their cold coils

there is nothing that lives
that does not cast down its bones

there are thorns for the sufferer,
a moment in the farthest reaches of a man

where the sweep of a prairie can carry him back
a thousand years

he feels the dust between his fingers
and tears in his eyes when the wind finds him alone

it will bloom in the spring, things close to the ground,
life tugging, coaxing it for another year

a desert dies in the winter
but it is not death

there are men who do not see its life,
who will tear it down in an hour

an ungodly demolition for a bottle of wine