Category: Nature

No bright line

I was young once: I wanted
Fancy clothes and designer
Shoes and the perfect leather
Bag. I dined and traveled and
“Did” the museums – most
On the company’s dime.

I waited for my husband
To love me again; I waited
To fall again in love with him.
I waited for him to find
Someone else – and he did.

But I am only 35 you say?
The line between young and old
Is not so clear. Now I want only
The things of “old age.”

To wake up in the morning
Next to a man I love.
To watch the cat chase sunshine
Across a room. To see the sails
Or the whitecaps or the ice
Upon the water and by this
Know winter or summer. To hear
Birds and dogs and children
Playing. To see an old man
Feed squirrels in the park.

To go to bed at night knowing
I’ve accomplished some small
Thing – repotted a plant or cooked
A meal or written a poem.
My greatest worry? Those
overdue library books.

I was young once,
but I am done with that.

I spy… a raindrop

Rain can be invisible in the city;
Twenty stories up, it is colorless

Against the gray sky, gray lake.
One infers the rain from the air’s

Heaviness or the sounds of water
Spraying off car tires in the street.

Buildings cloak the rain so completely
That I long to see proof of its falling.

I descend, sit in a window, watch the puddles
Form at intersections, each raindrop sparkling

Briefly on impact under fluorescent bulbs.
Soon the pavement sprouts lakes and tributaries

And human frogs hopping from isthmus
To island to curb, and I am reassured –

Nature has not vanished, only chosen
To work secretly in occupied territory.

Full moon over Mt. Lafayette

You cannot be real
Witches moon,
Brighter and fuller
Than all the clichés
Even as black cloud
Fingers cross your face.

Are you demon spirit,
Staple of horror films,
Prefacing the werewolf’s
Howl and the camera pan
To cauldron and circle
Of chanting crones? Or,

Are you mother Moon,
Goddess of light,
Artemis blessing her
Supplicants as they
Dance naked, dripping
With midnight rain?

Tonight you are my
Moon, rising over white
Mountain peak, silent
As a monk at prayer,
And as stoic. I wait,
In patient vigil, but
You grant no peace.