I hate mowing the lawn,
hate the way it sends chinch bugs
flying to the stars after the rain.

In my dreams, however,  I have lots of land,
and delight in sculpting neat parallel rows
with my tractor- over and over, on and on,

aerating the start of warrens and burrows
for rabbits and woodchucks to finish their
tunnels, for deer to graze my flowers, weeds.

In the morning the milkweed blossoms,
bringing supping butterflies. At night,
the fireflies rise painting the darkness.

When the grass grows high and it’s time
to mow again, I will close my  eyes,
and feel the biting bugs and buzzing flies

mating dreamscapes in the coming dusk.

The Hudson sleeps
and the clouds sweep
over the moon.

I promise little dear
with this small  tear
I will always love you.

Sleep, sleep, sleep
peace, peace, peace
the promise I grant you.

This song is the fact
that your star remains intact
in my heart, steady and true.

The river’s lull,
the moons’s full glow
will always pull us through.

The path will be rough.
The road back tough.
Yet, my cloak will  surround you.

Startle not, this wet drop,
is but my love pulled tight and true,
My love pulled tight and true.

Around me, within me,
within you, around you
sings the song of just us two.

The song I sing
is but the sad  tune of this night.
It will not be the story of you!

My life has been rapture,
rupture and strife
like all others in life.  

But you shall be more than my sorrow,
more than my wants,
more than my sad thoughts.  

You will be the moon song.
The one that everyone sings
to overcome the night!

It’s just a matter of just time,
of just time, just  time,
time, time, time…
,

i like to cling to the grime

the small grit of my father’s ashes
underneath my fingernails,
the part of him that refused
to fall to the rocks in the scattering

my mother’s scented oil in her hair,
her burning fat seasoning in the skillet
stinging my nostrils and eyes leaving me
seeing smelling less than my faultering ears

his ash sticks in the wall of my lungs
trying to pressure my air to diamonds
cutting me to his symmetry trying
always to rinse my blood of her tears

When I look at the sky its blueness mixes
and cycles with thunder, lightning and rain.

I notice, the  vulture, content to feast on leftovers of once
beautiful things, fly  with the same majesty of the hawk.

At night, I see the stars burn bright and smell the rain’s petrichor snake off the worn sides of Racoon Mountain.

Yet, I the only thing that is neither sky, bird, mountain nor star,
wonder, spend so much time wondering, if this is peace or joy.

Gray wolves howl invisible
on the granite shoreline
waiting for the sea’s answer-

standing tall on the headland,
against a wind that allows no trees,
signatures the stones with ageless storms—

howling to know why this once lush place
where endless fields of poppy intertwined with pine
is now defaced with crops of suburban homes.

Above, a falcon startled from its rocky perch soars
in its time- seeing in the shadows withdrawing
from clouds- the last glint of  beautiful stones.

I’m gentle with the spaces
I know and walk through.

Every door knobs has fingerprints.
The dust and air is full of ghosts,

I make them free not by removing them but
tidying them up into their own wandering space,

letting them tell their stories so I can joyously
tell mine in the right place, time and words.  

I free myself to the opportunity they provide me.
I am loyal to them and they to me.  

The other day I heard my mother speak to
me in a frame of film, a pixel flashing by.

”I love it.  Love, love, love it!”, she said
to everything she touched and adored.  

My wife was wondering why I was just
sitting there smiling and writing.  

“I don’t care. I love it! I love it, too!” I replied
to the life that created me and lives I will create.

I have done the work of gathering, curating, loving.
I am close, closer to finally  getting it right!

When her maman died
Marie flew ten hours to
the ancient French village
where the houses
steepled the church,
their mansard roofs
brown from neglect.  
The Weeping Willow
in front of maman’s
weathered hovel
did not match
Marie’s feelings.  
It never did.

Inside the furniture
had aged into antiques.
The handmade chaises
with ladder backs and
unadorned ticking,
French oak dinning table,
the vaisellier darker from
decades of hearth ash.

The rose print wallpaper had
faded to shadow bands,
the town print on the mantle
now almost sepia,
her first crib picture a fading
black and  white dream.

Maman’s single bed existed
pushed into the corner
of a windowless chambre,
almost a frenzied fever
blue room delusion of
Van Gogh’s last dying days.

Hanging alone in the closet was
maman’s noir widow’s dress,
the one Marie imagined maman
would be buried in.  That was
until Claire, the old neighbor next
door, gave Marie maman’s ashes
in a simple wooden box
with a gold filigreed clasp.
Pinned to the dress was Maman’s
will written in her eloquent hand
on unlined French folio.

These cinders, this shuddering land,
this dress with all its memories,
and grief would be her inheritance.  

Marie held the dress to her as
she returned to the archway
of the still open door.
The lace sleeves were  shorter
than she remembered,
but it would fit her very well.
Just beyond her, the country road
with its oaks grasping for union
stubbornly remained a horse trail.