owls in willow trees
saddest of images to me


owls in willow trees
softened broken limbs in me


owls in willow trees
let mossy scars all over me


owls in willow trees
night windows time in me


owls in willow trees
now have nothing to do with me


owls in willow trees
where I have been arrives in me


owls in willow trees
more than many of each of me


owls in willow trees
past beyond memory me


owls in willow trees
now there is enough of me

How many times have I climbed this mountain?
How many times sat in the dry leaves at the end of day?
And how many more to come?
Uncountable to me...
There must be a definite number
but to me they are endless.
Endless in number and endless
each in its own day.

I will let the moon in
one voice at a time
where the wind
tears its skin
one voice at a time

They have a lot to say
And they say it all day

Whip up the wind
the moon is finished with them!
Upon a time, once
twice again and again
with the wind
when the moon is finished with them
voices blow out of the voices’ hole
in the wind again with the skin
with the tear in the wind
with the wind against my skin

Mossy rock mossy me
by a little stream
where birds sing
as they bathe
and I pretend
I have feathers
just like them
and splash and fluff
and throw back my head
to sing and to laugh
but at the slightest sign
of alarm they fly off
and I am all alone
silent as a stone
on a mossy rock
mossy me

Node poem here: http://www.spicynodes.org/a/7d2bb6e5228c163e0f558105ee877522

Nodes:
set up on the nice spongy ground

a ring of stones where a fire goes

strawberries all around

but they are quite now

just as the fire went

when the wind blew

they coat the ground

but their fruit is asleep

deep in their green

an idea in their genes

still none of this

is why day goes

Earth
Ear
Earthear
Art hear
Art ear
Earth hear
Earth are
Theart
Hearth
H earth
H eart
Heart

Witch-hazel blooms in the winter light
Upon the grey rocky mountains’ height
A lady comes upon it and she weeps to see it bloom
So close to the winter and the snow comes too soon

Witch-hazel bough in this lady’s hair
She hears the owl call from its hidden lair
In the dark where her love’s gone and she must follow soon
Now that the snows covered over the witch-hazel bloom

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.

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.

The mountain becomes microscopic
when the sun shines on a leaf
or the ripples of a shallow stream.
The leaf has the precise shadow
of a winter stem on its white tongue
and the ripples make the stones
look like little dwelling places.
The mossy one I kneel upon
is like a carpet of fresh ancient forest.
A wind rises from on high
ranges over ranges…
There is still so much
possibility.

The world grows many times over
as the eye sees more than its sight.

I make faces and fingers
out of the stones and branches
and my own face in the water
is feline, a primitive mask
I take off for shining water underneath.

I want to do something with the wind.
Make it into something my rib cage can sing.
I want to go where it goes
all at once all the trees bowing
not to me but to he who passes through me.

I created a joy stronger
than the sway of happy and sad.
I saw the moon part the trees,
then sit in their leaves,
then sink
              lost in their past.

The wind blew all night.
Still the mountain stands.

The wind blows yellow
the wind blows blue green
the wind blows night
back into day.

The wind is a thought
thought long ago
that caught on like wild fire
and still thinks it blows.

I say the wind but I mean something else.
I may mean your hair, how the grasses
draw inspiration from it for flowers.
All these things are arranged as the wind leaves them.
No matter the order we take them they lead us back around.

Think of a word
         then just a letter
                      then let the letter
          be just an outline
with more space
          inside it than out.
Then let the wind
         come and rearrange
                      the emptiness without
         with the emptiness within.
This is where we begin.