I woke this morning
from a dream of eating blueberries
indigo streams
as the fruit burst
into juice and pulp
filling my mouth
with memories of summer
warm and crushed
and floating
on my speechless tongue

“This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe….?”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline


Among
the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

We stay in a log cabin built by men displaced by the Great Depression;
Who would have said that it was not great at all.
Losing their pride, then earning it back again.

Here we stay,
Provided a place by those men of the New Deal
Those builders who poured out their labor, their time,
Their thoughts, their words among themselves;

And they, I think, must stay here, too.

my soul is twisting
judging me and begging you
to release me from pain
to say I am absolved
I am understood
I am esteemed still

but I know that is not what I need
I need me to say
I am absolved
that I do not need absolving
I am simply me
trying to do the best I can
as are you

and I know
I am real and whole and good
no matter what you think
or I think you think

we are all struggling to be right
to be certified free from defect

but we are not
we are human

and we are trying
and I am trying
and I am me
and that is enough

“I have seen the movement of the sinews of the sky, And the blood coursing in the veins of the moon.”
– Allama Iqbal


In September,
the harvest moon,
named by the Algonquin people.

A gift to the earth;
endowed for corn, beans, squash, sunflowers,
and received in bright
thankfulness.

When, finally, the time arrives
for an autumn moon
to take its place between the earth and sun,
swooping as close to earth
as bright fireflies filling the sky.
Lunar scheduling;
a time to deliver scoops of light to
the shadowy earth.

Human faces staring upward
at the inky sky.
Stars dimmed by the golden moon
that shines on prairies, sand, on city streets;
glowing its song of moonlight;
offering a nocturne to the silent ground.

Each upturned face,
waiting to be christened with moonlight;
a conduit of heavenly fire
that moves from face to face circling
in contra dance around the rocky earth.

And each up tilted face
in Calgary and Cairo, Belarus and Brazil,
rhymes with golden light.

As the moon glow wanes above, it waxes here below;
endowing our faces with moonlight, a celestial loan,
leaving the moon with only orange and red,
while September yellow clings to us on earth.

The sound of light brushing our faces,
settling into place,
with sweetness of chamomile,
fragrant with the end of summer.
Whispers of the autumn equinox,
and the earth keeping promises.

Soon we must return
the borrowed lightening,
the buttery splash,
to the orange-red moon.

And we pay.
Not with regret,
but gladly.
All we who have seen the hushing of the moon;
we hold forever in the particles that make ourselves,
the seeds of moonlight.

Pieces of the moon.