Two hawks aloft
crows anxious banding together
neighbor comes over to my croft, likes the warm weather,
      November
a California Christmas and maybe species will migrate to reflect that,
paints watercolor ornaments, gentle Jewish lady
how far from her past is she now? or is she quite aware just
      not talking about it now
I wonder what she thinks the solution to Israel-Palestine might be
ask her sitting around the pool next summer
almost always disappointed people haven't given the single
      state solution more thought
we discuss Thanksgiving, the cleaning and cooking before
      and the cleaning after, then the insane Christmas potlatch
deciduous trees have a special winter beauty, conifers among them.

Full of doubt. About survival of the species and my own.
A plague of tent caterpillars, worse than an infestation,
an insurgency that has left the sky naked, bones revealed,
trees knee deep in webbing.

Another way to look at it: The caterpillars have opened up
the understory. It's not a form of terrorism,
it's an opportunity for otherwise repressed species
to assert genetic relevance.

A scientist gets out among the ticks and webs, observes
the march of barberries up the watershed, mustards spread
in tire treads, and hidden among this mess of invasives,
a jalopy of a hunter's roost.

Beer cans are also diagnostic. Inwood Park,
dog **** and abandoned cars, yet a copper beech around
      which
Indians camped. The broken asphalt and Spanish language.
Humanity followed time there.

When I see a fox, a coyote or a bear, I think What Good
      Luck
to be made of clay and alive this year. If I saw a cougar
I would not know what to do. It would change my life,
like an archaic torso of Apollo.

Look for the silver lining. Walk on the sunny side of the street.
Count your blessings. Life goes on. A little better every day in
      every way.
You can't take it with you. It's only money. People who need
      people are
the luckiest beetles in the world.

Spring is sprung.
Clouds of maple.
Skies of pine.

Red in green.
Serviceberry understory.
Spring is sprung.

Skunk cabbage spathe.
Black birch sap.
Poplar flowers.

Opossum tires.
Spring is sprung.
Blackbird wing.

Wasps won't sting.
My father died.
Town meeting Monday.

Spring is sprung.
Sing cuccu!
There's no down side.

Infinite willow.
Leaning oak.
Spring and sprung.

Budding flame.
Budding thumb.
Cat claw.

Bird yolk.
Spring is sprung.
Dandelion

Shoots. Arrowhead
Roots. Waterproof
Boots. Old bed young.

Spring is sprung.
Ring and wrong.
Thank and thought.

Seed and sawn.
Wait and walk.
Spring is sprung.

For the accountant, the librarian, on this cold day
there is no revelation. He will go his own way
to the roar of the tinnitus in his ears.
About our war what is there to say. Yesterday
a flock of bluebirds was the only color in the woods.
Have they arrived too early for their good?
Of Judith and Inanna I have Korf's fears.

Inanna is generous, Judith is dangerous.
On each the wise elders depend for sustenance,
protection. Agriculture is ******
and wars end when men remember *******.
To savor the young woman's thighs and the old one's food,
to water her womb and cut her wood.
Is this not what's real, the actual, the animal?

The women I have known were bluebirds and crows, such
nuthatches, cardinals, robins, an occasional thrush.
They did not consider their bodies holy,
they found my seduction easy. What good luck
on the bed, in the light of the land, in our youth.
Our enemy eventually becomes our brother,
his misery lifted by coming to her city.

Two thoughts come to mind this morning. The deficiencies in
      our systems of governance -
local, global -
and the first two pages of The End of Faith in which he
      mistakes political (acts of war) for
religious acts,
but recognizes understanding the workings of the world is not
      the same as knowing
the unknowable.

Every new twinge provokes fear but what is there to fear?
      That one won't
live forever?
The year of a man is the day of an inchworm and 267 years
      on a reverse-
rotating Venus.
A billion of anything is a lot unless it's the distance one must
      traverse to look
at God.

How much silence, or tinnitus, can you handle? A chipmunk
      cannot for long
stand still.
Once the twinge passes I'm off to the next task: building a
      constituency for this compassion,
that solution.
The dialogue starts with a question. To know the question is
      almost certainly to find
an answer.

Conflating questions is the commonest of logic errors. No
      negotiation unless the
violence ends.
Why not talk while we fight? We can always ****, torture or
      assassinate
between conversations.
Justice, or retribution if you want, can remain on the table
      even after we
achieve understanding.

Nature is my religion, I know no other, and community is my
      church.
The sacrament
is policy debate. I attend church everyday. Our jobs are
      hymns (the classifieds
a hymnal)
and payment for services rendered is sung praise and
      gratitude. Walking and talking
is prayer.

Strategies to limit or subvert discussion are the only evil.
      Violence
is one
but not by far the only one. What's the hurry to build a
      highway or free
a people?
The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time and time is
      the mercy
of eternity.

November and April
when the trees are first bare and last naked
have become my favorite months. All the food eaten
except last rose hips and earliest leeks.
Leaves innocent
as dying men and infants.

Study one plant or animal each morning
before writing anything. All reading -
poetry or prose, truth or fiction -
classified the same, the distinguishing
characteristics being helpful or boring,
beautifully or indifferently written. Then

practice trumpet worried not at all about
my sound or perfection. Afternoon, my sons
return from school, math and (again)
reading, piano. Wednesdays we walk
observe plants and animals and record
our observations to identify and classify

later in the week. Nothing else special
need be done but stay alive.

Basketball stands for war or battle.
That's why I think about the players'
personalities, in my foxhole or squad.
Danny and Ben are fast and smart. Dan
especially can pass making him master
and commander. To defeat them as we did
is very satisfying. Ben's five year old son
is intelligent but distant. Disdains to answer
my question Why are you you?
                                                       But I'm not here
to catalogue the men's personalities.
I like them. But each of us has moved on
many times, when  _______  suddenly died
the games went on with hardly a mention
and his name has since been forgotten.

But even this, absolute mortality
of not just our bodies but our names
and souls is not what I came
to talk about. Yesterday, between games,
I asked Joe how Molly his daughter likes
the high school. He mounted an impassioned
defense of reading as the indispensable skill
when I suggested math, the scientific method
and history are essential too.
                                                 Also between games
Bob diffidently asked why my kids are bald.
I was moved by the care he took to satisfy
his curiosity, concerned the subject might be
difficult. He's a political science teacher so
I took the opportunity to ask What ails
the republic? Of course I answered myself
wanting mostly to hear myself talk about Iraq
and how empire is self-correcting. For once I was amusing
I thought, treating the subject with a light touch
heretofore lacking.

But none of this is what I came to say.
A new guy, very big and strong, a
bulldozer under the boards with a good
outside shot if needed got into a dispute
with the other Bob who likes to tell people
what to do sometimes, about an offensive
foul Bob called which we almost never do.
The new guy said If you can't take it don't
play under the boards which is what I say
when I'm ****** and don't give a ****.
Bob said You've been pushing and shoving me
all day. I said He doesn't want to be
pushed and shoved which got a wry
smile out of Danny as I put the ball in play.