super blood wolf moon
almost sounds ridiculous
but it's breathtaking
                        rc

Your soul is within
The universe is without
Both are infinite

Can I stay in the woods
Just another day - another hour
To feel the breathing of the earth
To bear witness to these massive green lungs
These carbon giants drinking as one
Devouring the transgressions of their global environs
Such an immense task
Struggling and failing to stay before
Their numbers cleaved in half
In a scant one hundred years
Cut and razed and plowed and concreted
Supplanted by cities and roads and grazing lands
Growing wealth for some
Growing meat for some
What to do? What to do?
Can't grow a forest in a parking lot
Can't displace those gassy bovines
From the desert evolves the jungle
But we don't have another hundred years
For now I'll stay in the woods
Just another day - another hour
To feel the breathing of the earth
                                                RC

I forgive the mere mosquito that bites me on the neck
Consider if we didn't we'd be a puddled wreck
They come in crowds of thousands in an aerial assault
The energy to hold a grudge – well, we forgive them by default
I forgive the ones that get me, that drink at my expense
I forgive the ones that, mercy me, I **** in self defense
Of course I don't dislike the little beggers any less
Forgiving them won't serve to stem a subsequent transgress
It's not something we have to learn - from birth until our death
We know how to forgive one as we know to take a breath

There was an awfully bad assault when I was just a boy
With rising welts across my back like grisly corduroy
My profound embarrassment forced me to camouflage
Even now my mem'rys just an indistinct montage
That time I did not forgive. Mortified and angry
It took me years to realize – the forgiveness was for me
I forgive the ones that get me, that drink at my expense
I forgive the ones that, mercy me, I **** in self defense

                                            RC

Suppose I wrote a story
And told everyone it's true
I'd offer up a big reward
If you would say so too

But how could I deliver
On the promises I'd said?
Well here's the thing, you can't collect
'Til after you are dead

                  RC

bitter cold sweeps in
my easy comfort shames me
homeless can't get warm

RC

Listening
_____________
Amy Lowell,1874-1925
_____________

’T­ is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sing but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
The song of earth has many different chords;
Ocean has many moods and many tones
Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods
The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones
Autumn alone can ripen. So is this
One music with a thousand cadences