Two cats in an open window
Big cat wants
to preserve his prerogatives
Little cat thinks
it should be his turn
But for now,
It's time to watch birds
together.

Only ten percent of my DNA is
Mine
Which seems to prove
I do not live alone
I should feel one with
All life
But instead, I feel
Infected

I keep thinking about the lion
who could pull down a buffalo alone
But when they shot him with a tranquilizer dart
And weighed him in a canvas sling
He weighed only 400 pounds.
Too small to ever win a pride
He ended as a pile of bleaching bone
He died as he hunted – alone.

The ghosts of the dead give no shade
In this cemetery of stumps.
Elsewhere, the seeds left behind
Sprouted, and the forest lived again.
Not so on Kingston plain,
Where the life of the very soil failed,
Now a field of Bracken fern and lichen.
But, here and there,
An Aspen lifts it's quaking leaves.
In the shade, the lichens yield,
And grass grows again.
"Perhaps in another hundred years",
The ghosts whisper.

With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.

Once, upon a weekend morning, while I slumbered, loudly snoring
After many a workday of quaint and forgotten chores
While I nodded, well past napping, suddenly there came a scratching,
As if the paint was gently stripping, ripping from the bedroom door.
“He’ll stop,” I muttered, “scratching at my chamber door.”

“He’s only bored, and nothing more”

Deep into my blanket hiding, there I lay in fear abiding,
Doubting, hoping I could sleep as I had ever slept before;
But the silence then was broken, and the door way, old and oaken,
Swung open as the clever kitty, made the lock a simple chore
And then my dreams were gone as are the winds of yester-yore

I knew I should have fixed that door.

Open then he pushed the doorway, then, with padded foot and whisker,  
In he stepped,  the ebon creature who I bought that cat food for
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, like he who owns the household, perched above my pillowed snores —
Perched upon the feathered pillow which my sleeping bonnet bore —

Perched, and silently implored.

Then, methought, the cat grew braver, thinking of his breakfast’s savor
Poking at my sleeping visage, poking more, and more and more.
"Wretch," I cried, "the devil’s sent thee — a witch cat sent to leave me
No respite and no Nepenthe, but only the memory of the sleep I had before!
Let me quaff this kind Nepenthe and rejoin my final snore!"

Purred the black cat, "Nevermore."    

“Be that word our sign of parting, cat or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting —
As I threw him into the darkness of the Night's Plutonian shore.
“Leave my slumber unbroken!  Come you not with purr and pokin’
Take thy paw out of my nostril, and take thy **** right out the door!
Leave no black fur as a token, you eat at nine, and not before!”

Cried the black cat, "I like before."    

But that **** cat, never quitting, still is sitting, still is splitting
The recently repaired latex on my bedroom door;
And his eyes have all the burning of a feline that is yearning,
For the cat dish full of kibbles, sitting, sitting on the kitchen floor;
As my soul rose from the blankets, with a howling, futile roar:

Sleeping in on weekends — nevermore!

At Camp Sloane,
After waterfront,
They came for Moose.
"Your mother is sick,"
They told him.
"She's going to die."
Moose went home.
We went to campcraft.
My mother died next winter,
After a long illness.

A warbler with his jewel-bright head,

Caught my eye as he sped

From nest to branch to arcing skies,

Above his leafy paradise.

Beneath my feet, I barely saw,

Entrapped by a serpent's jaw,

A dying toad with his last breath,

Fighting against a gruesome death.

If tempted by the warbler's trill,

I was chastened by the reptile's ****.

Weak of claws and teeth and hair,

**** in Eden would I share

The songbird's or the brown toad's fate,

If I should take my nature straight?

It must be strange to have five feet,
Which open clamshells nice and neat,
And hunt the shallow ocean floor,
Equipped with these and little more.
One day washed up high and dry,
Underneath the arid sky,
To end your days on some child's shelf.
I think I'd rather be myself.

My wife rolls her eyes
When I point out another wind turbine
“Bird Shredders”
“Pork Barrel for guilty Liberals”
“Don’t they disrupt wind patterns?”
But
When I look up at a stately giant
Broadcasting infrasound across the plains
I remember my nose pressed against the window
Of a 1957 Pontiac
In Wisconsin
Yelling
“Windmill”
As we passed every farm
As my parents rolled their eyes.

Trees, so green and reaching high,
Staples twixt the earth and sky.
The branches hold the heavens down,
Even when the winds sweep round.
The roots which we think feed the tree,
Keep the ground from falling free.
If we had not these doughty ties,
Holding down the flighty skies,
Sun and dirt would rip apart,
Each their lonely courses chart,
And we would curse the name of God,
For not attaching sky to sod.

Two heads, chins resting comfortably
On each other’s coils.
Eyes Fixed
Glazed or implacable
Far Away
Entwined tails
Writhe in ecstasy

I like the woods
when my heartbeat is louder
than the fall of snow

I don’t like the woods
When the roar
Of snowmobiles
Drives blue smoke
Through the trees.

On the old promenade
Stands the last elm tree
At the end of a row
Or politically correct sprouts.

My parents used to fish
On Castle Creek
With canvas vests and wicker creels.
They always caught their limit.
And we had fresh trout for breakfast.
Last year
I drove my father
Up Castle Creek,
Alone and with knees too old
For clambering on wet rocks.
We stopped and talked
To a fisherman
With nylon gear and neoprene boots.
My father told him where the fish were.
Then I drove him home,
Down castle creek,
For the last time.

The reflection of a star
Shimmering on the night-dark water
Born in the heart of a fierce sun
A million years
Jostled by his neighbors
To reach the surface
Then - free at least!
A hundred years more
Through dust and meteors and comets
To find a tiny planet
Then reflect off a quiet lake
And improbably die
In the rods and cones
Of my insignificant eye.

I sat by the water
In my Walmart folding chair.
A gull came to visit.
He told me
He played on the wind all day,
But his feathers were finer
Than my polyester fleece.
I think I saw that in the Bible.
Then he flew away
With one of my corn chips.

One hot and sultry summer night,
While the trees outside stood dark and still,
I tried to get my checkbook right,
At the desk beside my window sill.

One thing moved in the heat and damp,
The whispering of a hundred moths,
Trapped around the backyard lamp.
In pity, I went and turned it off.

They flew away and left me there,
Wishing that something, likewise, might
Free me from the musty air
That gathered around my dim desk light.

My old brass wind-harp, long un-tongued,
Gave forth a single, clarion chime,
From where it had, untroubled, hung.
A neighbor’s porch gave answering rhyme.

I turned to see the heat-lights leap
Between the towering thunderheads,
Which had gathered in the upper deep,
While I nodded, working, half asleep.

I’m told that Mrs. Firefly,
In a hungry, not a **** mood,
Will blink a luminescent lie,
And use the answering male for food.

I’m sure that Mr. Firefly
Believes he rules the summer night,
And flickers proudly as he flies
To that blinding, binding, blinking light.

Cool guys in black slacks
Hot Chicks in stiletto heels
Drinks raised in garden-level bars
And a few couples
With baby carriages

Zero degrees but I was warm in my bed,
Feeling safe and immune to all outside dread.
The wind beat at the windows and near hid the voice,
That chilled my warm bed with its obvious choice:
To hide in my blankets and close off my ears,
To the crying for help now choked off by tears,
Or get in my clothes and go out in the night,
Offer help I can't give, and try to do right?
I'd heard all the stories of people who'd died,
While neighbors around chose to stay home inside,
Where it's warm and it's light and screams aren't heard
If your heart is all closed, and your soul interred.
So I put on my clothes and put off my fear,
And went out in the cold and strained hard to hear.
The night now was silent, the wind alone spoke
Of lonely and frigid and dying for hope.
The cold stung my ears, my breath froze in my hair,
And something remained of that voice of despair.
I could hope the police brought help for her grief,
To me they brought only a shallow relief,
I then turned away and got warm in my home,
And tried to forget the deep chill in my bones,
Forget that the city is full of such fear,
And it's warm and it's light and it's empty in here.

I sing no songs of mystic whales
I find no ultimate harmony
In the balance of caribou and wolves
I do not proclaim the salvation
Of man in the wisdom of the wild
The law of nature is a cruel knife
And I know the dark underside of the woods
Is the death by rending of all who
Live in its green halls
Except that one creature who chose
To walk concrete passageways
And live by the hum
Of his own constructs
I do not begrudge my ancestors their choice
To flee the ruthless machinery of nature
And seek a longer life
In a world of straight lines
And unnatural light
Why then does my soul fill up with peace
When I watch the sun set
In a sky brushed with
Cinnamon and gold?

I saw a Muskellunge
Snap a tiny Loon
Out of its mother's wake
Leaving her to circle
The floating down
And cry
That primal cry
That echoes
Through the north woods.

In the slate cold
And grey ice of January
A few song birds
Raise brave voices
Overhead
Flights of crows
Wheel in their thousands
What hope is there
For spring?

In Texas,
Land of guns,
And oil fields,
And chain gangs,
They warm sea turtles
In plastic bins
When it gets cold,
And send them on their way
When the sun returns.

For the quiet of the woods and sound of loons,
I went to the island to be quite alone,
But a yacht in the harbor was playing loud tunes,
And flying a buzzing remote-controlled drone.

She climbs
She leaps
And crashes
And climbs again
Such energy
She almost flies
Such courage
Til a manic scramble
Across a lap
A grabbed tail
This is a boy cat
Oh.
You can get him nuetered.

It hurt too much to cry for Mom,
But I had a fat old yellow Tom
Those days it seemed I never sat
Without that furball on my lap.
When I had to leave him at the vet
I wept
A funny fat old yellow cat
The straw that broke the camel's back.

A world,
Once serene,
Blessed with dignified change
At the pace of shifting continents,
And eroding mountains.
The epochs rolled on.
Then came infestation,
With its slimy tendrils.
Every rock fouled by growth
Every crevice dark with
Rot and decay.
Filaments grow upward and branched
Giving shade for corruption
Beneath their moldering feet.
Some run across the festering plains
Trying to rise higher and live longer
Only to be rent limb from limb
And sink into the ooze
That strips flesh from bone
The muck always wins
And the cycle of death continues
Until the sun, disgusted,
Burns the world clean once more.

I felt fragile, weak, and small,
Beside the mighty waterfall.
But I saw, upon the safety rail,
A creature that was still more frail.
She spun her many-circled net,
Beside the cataract, and yet,
Feared not the water, as did I,
And looked not past her juicy fly.
Did she know the water green,
Which thundered past her, sight unseen,
Is no more mighty in God's eye,
Than the beauty of her mist-jeweled line?

There was a secret sidewalk
In my hometown
That we walked every day
Coming home from school
Despite the shroud of hanging inchworms
That veiled the path
Through our little wilderness.
I went back last year
To find a row
Of swimming pools.

The cat
Brings my wife toys
At night
He drops
A velvet mouse
By her head
And curls up at her feet
I pull her close
And feel the soft flannel
I left for her
Under the Christmas tree.

The sun shines bright on Agate Bay.
Lake Superior is cobalt cold,
And the wind never stops,
Hurrying the little waves,
Onto the red pebble beach,
Which hurts bare feet.
Two girls in bikinis walk
With eyes downcast,
Looking for the pretty stones.
Indifferent to the gelid wind.

I found a little fish
In a little pool
Halfway up a cliff,
Jumping bravely up the trickle
To the next pool
Which was not there
That little pool is the measure of his life
unless he jumps too far
And dies
flopping on the rock.

Mars was bright that year,
And reflected off the lonely lake,
As red as the belly of my upturned canoe.
I stood naked by the lapping waves,
Washing off the stale bug dope,
In the smoke from my campfire,
(The mosquitoes, too, were bad that year.)
The accusing war-god eye
Looked up from the dark water
And asked
“What if you broke an arm out here?”

Blue stilt bird in a tree
On the green
Promontory.
When he tired of the view,
He flew.
I, too
Flew,
Or, so it seemed,
In dreams.

Crows flock in the graveyard
Of St. David’s cathedral.
We walk under the gnarled trees.
My wife takes my hand,
“Have I told you I love you today?”
She does that.
No, but you did wipe crow ****,
Off the back of my neck,
With a tissue
From your purse.

The dam on the Grand Coulee
Was awesome
The wildflowers on the mountain
Were indescribable
So, according to the box
Were the crackers
I had for breakfast.

They call in blue shade
The kind they don't like
Nothing grows beneath the tree
They like green shade
The kind that shares
But the hemlocks still stand
And the pines are dying.

All things die,
Even tree houses,
And trees.
Far away,
The children who played here,
Among green leaves,
Sigh
Their children
Never call.

Breakfast in bed,
And idle pools,
And fountains spreading rainbows in the sun,
Which mostly shines.
An hour at the mill and back
Wiping the hands on tissue
That is never seen again
Perfect hands
Soft and White
For holding flowers
An island, not in the sea,
But in tumult.
A seawall weary and straining
Lamentations bitter and loud
Not from without
But within.

The gas can can't stay in the car or the tents,
So it stays by the post where the lantern is hung.
It cools in the shade and the vapors condense,
'til the flat sides cave in,
And the gas can goes "Spung".

Then the sun slides around, and warms it anew.
The pressure increases like an inflating lung,
'til the roiling and boiling gaseous stew
Pops out the hot metal
And the gas can goes "Spung".

The day settles out and the night does abide,
The fire burns to embers and the last song is sung.
The wind in the holler cools down the tin sides,
The pressure drops off,
And the gas can goes "Spung".

Then, late in the night when the moon shines above,
And none but the whip-poor-will raises his tongue,
The silence is heavy and the air does not move,
No reason calls,
But the gas can goes "Spung".

Only when the leaves have fallen
And the world is quiet
As the snow falls softly
Can I hear the lonely wail
Of distant trains
As they run down the tracks
Far away from my window

An old man
Sat on the rocks
And scowled
At the boy with the blue hair
And baggy shorts
Who was swimming in the rapids
Daring the others to jump in.
The old man
Remembered,
And smiled

They freed the river
A steam shovel on a barge
Gnawed the dam down to bedrock
And the river ran free
Now alders line the banks
The salmon have returned
The holy men’s prayers are answered
But a flood washed out the road
To the dam
Last year.

My wife knows what a Dobsonfly is.
She tenderly plucks him
Off my fleece jacket
And coos how pretty
His red eyes are
Indifferent, he flies away
To mate and die.

My friends call it a transition
A new phase of life
The guiltmongers scowl
"Not everyone is as lucky as you"
I sit with drink in hand
And watch the setting sun
The transition from this phase
Is death.

You'd take my hand and wait to see,
What I'd say when you loved me.
I know you must have wondered why,
I never gave you like reply.
But lady, you must understand,
Why I only squeezed your hand.
Love enough was only there,
To be important to be fair.
I told my self to be beguiled,
I only needed wait awhile.
But before that time you set me free,
Was the problem you, or was it me?

The young crusader sat
With stern jaw set
On the old pink couch
That was all they could afford
With her dark gentle head
On his lap
And watched Jack Benny
Before her trip
To the doctor.

Some of today's children
Still swim in wild lakes,
Where the fish nibble toes,
And weeds slither around bare legs.
They sing songs together,
Which echo across the water.
Two loons herd their children away,
And their prehistoric
Cries of protest
Echo across the water.

I was supposed to be
A warrior,
The son and heir,
To the old crusader.
But motivation is not in our genes,
And a man’s determination
That the next generation
Will be different,
Sometimes wins out.