Autumn's keen colors
bust out gold-flecked
      and lucent
A fetching masquerade
Til one day the facade drops
      The flaunting stops
And we face our transformation --
The body of real things

The cleansing verity of snow, yes:
We make our cold confessions
      to it --
Our sooth world unadorned;
      No high fashion statements
      No sweet smells from the earth.

Just the white truth of being --

In the deep woods near,
The trees are poets;
They write their rustling
Lines against a paper sky --
Invited to their mystic house
I am brought to life,
        Embraced and entwined
        Like a prodigal child
                 Forgiven everything --

The forest floor is cool and still
Yet below, the earth is humming
Sweet-scented and loamy
Pulling at some memory that
        Beats ancient in me --

Such tempo'd spells sing
        Among the ferns here:

        Beckoning

Remember June
Green enduring
Clover growing madly
Rose's thorns
Gardens lush
From feasts of rain
Here and gone
Leaving water wells behind
And drip-drops hugging
Heaps of stones and moss --

A thousand smells
A thousand dank secrets
All of life stretching upward
To regard the Sun, who
Mightily beats his yellow drum --

Who am I
But June's curator,
Tending her summer works?

There is a stirring
      when one sees with clarity
            what lies ahead --

Edges sharpen, and
      the air pressure drops.
            Trees rustle where
                   there is no breeze;

A wind chime tinkles
      in a desolate place
            and it feels like
                  the end of time--

I -- am with her right now
The small girl who lives in my heart's recess
And fills that beating palace with hope --

She sits in a patch of grass, just beyond,
In my mind's open meadow,
Singing to herself and picking blueberries
        she puts in her pocket.
She counts clouds on purple-stained fingers
And giggles at the chickadee's song
                   Phoe-be!      Phoe-be!
Forever six years old --

Sunlight tangles in her hair
As she twirls and fans her sundress,
        plopping to the ground
Her laughter filling an innocent sky --

She is luminous
The love between us:
The deepest kind --

Tiny shops hunch in a row
On brick and clapboard feet
A huddle of windows filled
        with come-on-in
The sun slides behind their flat tops
As I wait for you on the bridge --

Clouds push and shove each other
Across a dusky sky:
                I watch you cross the street
A thief bearing a single plucked flower
Your pockets crammed with promises
        that won't be kept
But I don't care
My pulse is launching rockets --

The river beneath flows
        in irrefutable rhyme
Smells of moss and deadwood
        fill the air
Brown geese out for a swim
        are making social calls
As you take my hand
                Small
        Into yours
And I know
When I look into your eyes
I must never kiss you
As twilight tucks us in
        And brushes back our hair --

Christmas comes:
A juggernaut
Lumbering through December
Overstuffed
Once benevolent
Now all razzmatazz
And who gets what
A free-for-all at the bargain bins;

And by the way Peace on Earth --