november is spring to me, being birth month to us
who remember other seasons, other lives, some other time
on the wheel in the vortex of yeats

we return from voided memories to leafless trees
and love the green going into red and gold
turning white ourselves in time, shedding matter

entering the cocoon, leaving summer caterpillars behind
to dream of wings and things
 

Elemental Matters

they knew the ancients
elemental matters
of fire and ice earth and sky
where the animal was and how
to wear the world in and out

there darkness shelters danger
then light color rainbow reflection
rippling in the wind and waves
of seeing feeling fleet across
shadow moving over meadow
and in another's eye a stranger
looking into consciousness

rising in awe at it aflame
breathing sky into all that matters
 

Keeping Time

time is everywhere we choose
how and where to display it
clocks calendars sundials
marks on the cave wall
a metronome pulsing in our veins
as if waiting for some wonder
to reveal itself in number

keeping time we think
measure words into song
to hold once upon a time
when time was no matter
we being young in it
dancing in the sand
sifting through the glass
 

Distillation

a poem a day a necessity
distill the nectar of experience
essence light from noon
illume night that looms
starspeckled with rhyme
at least line
a tracing of yes

in all the know
nothing but breath
crystallized hieroglyph
a cipher some archeologist
of heart may say
a meaning to
 

Letting Go

about letting go
a lesson in seasons
moving from green to gold
leaf to bare
time and hope

still feeling death is not
for me this morning
still mothers die
showing the way

evening comes
a practice daily
the falling into sleep
and letting go
 

Holding Her

remembering feeling more than
now is there
somehow a gain in the losing though
what was imagined
i think was never felt
save in one heart illusioned
for decades believing love
till art revealed the heart belonged
to blue eyes and golden hair
and hate blared from intoxicated eyes
that once reflected her green and gray

holding her
responsible for the color of his day