Robin

a childhood memory of an evening song,
caroling Peterson called it,
he knew of such things

and the sublime shape
all proportion and balance,
slaty perfection and terracotta,
brick-red in the mountain ash
with its freeze-dried berries,
a heady fruit for the good flocks
that come to gorge and pose

how they work the lawns
in the spring with that tilting eye
and still circumspection
then the hurried march - repeating
stabbing the earth and rearing back,
pulling a worm much too big
for its gape, a cartoon extravaganza

so close to us, just look out the window
you can see them everywhere when
the weather chimes a new beginning,
a comfort to us when lost and uncertain,
robins singing the praises of their short lives
when the world forgets such things

Language of Trees

reach with your limbs
hold up the sky
you are my arms

rooted to the earth
against eternity
you are my legs

bend in the wind
never will break
you are my resilience

a song in the crowns
the melody of history
you are my keeper

a breath for you
is a breath for me
you are my life

a thousand years to grow
a minute to die
you are my legacy

the wail of your fall
a weeping in the forests
you are my language

Sons

I sat with you for the first time
in the light of an alien shore

I loved you more just then
with your whispers and prayers
when you looked up to see her
streaming through the high-up glass

And the things that you show me
without words is a grace that breaks my heart

We both lost someone and the world
knows of such things, what dies
and what is revealed, how I can hold
your hand that once held me

A father teaches his son how to cry in the end

The Last Cold Days

There is something in the thicket,
beating hearts quiver
in the last cold days

A snowflake cannot find its place

Ice on the lakes pull away from the shore

Buds swell like a rising love

Birdsong has no motive,
only the faint hope of renewal

And the cat knows that yearning
but cares not for the rise and fall of nations
or foot prints on the moon

The Cost of Oil

The river moves over the old stones
and sings to my world

I will not listen

I will not pray for the brown eyes
who cast their hearts into the riffles

I turn away when they come to bless
the crooked fish

I will not recognize a thousand years
because I spit into the green pools

I do not know the poverty
that makes them stand beside me

The river moves over the old bones
and the melodies are dying

I will not see

I do not see my reflection
or the sheen of my recklessness

The river moves

Sleep

the day ends
and the world
is liquid behind
my eyes

the dreamer
finds his place
where faces change
like shattered suns

if I open my eyes
and I am alone,
kiss me before I find
you out and die

Arid

What is empty of all reason
is what brings a man to his knees,
the cold blade against his throat
when he asks the world to help him
wash the blood from the streets

he is cut open

as he holds his children so
that they may see the end of
fear and the beginning of free
uncertainty that has no death

she is cut open

as she stares into our rooms
with her hand out as they shoot
her brother in the head,
standing still, brother and sister

they are cut open