Hug the earth close
as the moon goes around.
We all have lights
some greater, some lesser.
The sun is so generous
it doesn’t need to shine all the time.
It leaves room for the moon's turn,
and the moon turns the sun into time.
In waves it comes
gradually, as an evening ends,
as a child matures.
The child matures
as it grows dark many times over.
Is the child still afraid of the dark?
Or does darkness just mean stopping
laying down, listening without moving?
It is so still tonight.
The moon is just beginning.
Once again, just beginning.
The stillness is like the darkness
it makes the earth closer,
the mountain the unclasped hand
hugging me closer
sheltering my little light.

Hug the earth close
as the moon will try to pull you from it.
It wants you to float like an unreal number
in endless digits never coming to rest.
It comes to rest in pools left behind by tides.
The stillness of the water is the template.
The intricacy of the pattern is the movement.
I’ve never not been here before.
What does time say to the other
to shake it loose from timelessness?
Leaves cover the stones
November is the season’s bones.
Leaves cover the ground
the book of nature unbound
the trees are writers out of ideas
the forest a library after an earthquake.
So hug the earth close
whisper the affirmations
-- It is always Close, always Here
    It is in All and is All --
and write them on the palms
you busy your days with
for the page lies when it lies down.
So stand it up
and mix it up
with the leaves you walk through.

My Whippet gone,
now dust once again.

I've given him back,
from whence he came.

To run again
in cosmic fields,
waiting to be born.

*Shanzi is a syllabic poem in seven lines  4/5 5/4 4/4/5
Unrhymed
Lines 1 and 2   INTRODUCE the SUBJECT
Lines 3 and 4   AMPLIFY what is affected by the image/subject.
Line 5 thru 7    Focus on NEW SUBJECT that complements and provides a meditative conclusion.
Shanzi may be Titled

Harrogate, TN  November, 2014

I have plans for the moon
By night and by day
sometimes opening, sometimes closing
a seeing which does not depend on the eye
and an eye which does not merely see.
The moon gets behind me
and flows like a stream
inside a mountain
many dark miles unseen
before emerging as the source
of something pure that will heal me.

I have plans for the moon
like the sunflower nodding in the mind
shifts and keeps an eye
on father sun in the sky
resemblance does not depend on closeness
but the transfer of heat and invisible elements.
In the cool of the evening
a trail appearing through the dew
where an animal walks with a god
and man is missing from the middle.

I have plans for the moon
as the moon has plans for me.

A bird sounds like a squeaky gate
and then I realize it is a squeaky gate.
Things pass out of my mind
with new names and associations
which helps the woods grow denser.
I don’t really have time
to be old fashioned.
I drop my pen in the stream
next to a red spring leaf
already rehearsing for the fall.
The main thing I do
when it strikes
is walk.

Slowly I learn
not to cram too much
pleasure into beauty.