Monday, October 29, 2012

A Gentle Rain

the rain settles like hands
upon you, cold fingers
remembering your face

there is no one in the street
but the washed few who think
that it is for them

there are small voices in the rain,
no one talks, and you can think
without the urgent sun

and the melancholy drift of it,
the grey and insipid pouring
that allows you to shrink back

we can rest there,
a moments withdrawal
from the world of face-time

look at the solitary crows
and how the rain boils
off their ungodly capes

they cackle with their jaunty hops,
pleased, i would say, to be so ridiculous
in the carnival of wet and shivering

but not too much of it
under the dripping leaves
listening to the drizzle and sizzle

i once sat in the woods as a boy
when a thrush told me stories
with its rusty-hinge song

and when it rains now
and the sky falls black and brooding,
i take his hand and wait for the music

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The Scorched Earth

the scorched Earth
and the rivers run dry,
my tears are salted stains
and still I hope as flesh clings to bone

so I look for the aspens crowded gold
in the high coulees - there is peace
in their trembling songs

it is my imperative, as necessary
as anything worth living for,
to understand their language

what can I say to the ravagers
among us, the man in the suit
with his wealth and swagger?

he does not believe in Life, does not see
what is vanishing - that what is seared
will burn him too

the future has been written, some say that
Crimes Against the Environment
will see his name soaked in oil

what will he tell his children
when the fires come over the hill?