In mainland meadows, flowers tempt,
Yet spurn those animals they tease,
Except caprificating bees.  
Here, whatever’s edible’s unkempt.  

There is an isle more fortunate
Where nettles sow chrysanthemums,
And farming isn’t wearisome,  
And where what tempts must satiate.

Discredit not the busy honey bee,
or the hedgehog that makes the grasses stir
The old owl that makes it's nest in the fir
Admire the deer pacing the woods with glee!
No bard does justice to the roaring sea,
no sculptor the grace of a wild flower
Or the nurturing of a rain shower,
or majesty of an ancient oak tree

The beauty of Nature, a peaceful sight
Like swans taking flight in the rose sunset
Deep deserts where small foxes show no fear
of man, and to feel a thunderstorm's might
All these wondrous things and more can be met
on this miracle, blue-green biosphere

The fog loses purchase
on the window
and, dying, wicks
ashy vapor's slick scatter
to gated green-brown.
Morning comes again
in fractioned crooks
of snow declining
into fat eggs of rain.
The fog is a colossus,
ravels with dragging step,
before retiring itself
above oak branchlets.  
The sun wraps away
in gray, as if stolen.  
Nativity of cloud.
I'm telling you this:
everything is possible.

All the women in my life
They- I cannot deny-
Have shown me love unknown
To men who vainly roam

Their words of dew and sway
Bring rise to dawn and day
Their hymns and fabrics blown
From their sylvan loam

They bear me in their arms
Where sorrow breeds no harm
And turn my mouth to crow
Of harsh and fleeting home

In time and hastened feet
Approaching skin's defeat
I recollect and row
Through times of sky and foam

See the eyes, through jagged trees
Humbly calling out to thee
And the damp eagle plea
Downy arms falling free

As breath makes no qualms
With the levity of psalm
And the soot between palms
Lies still in fearful calm

Orion’s sprightly pace
Shrouds the cratered face
As pearls fall without trace
Miss the ocean’s embrace

Neon ghosts surround
The orphaned mobile sounds
As empty fertile ground
Now bitter and profound

Within malignance, the smell of stale night
As blue and then amber engulfs the sight

In the waist high soy fields
We laugh like choking dogs
On the image of the hand that yields
So we worship in restless monologues

In the ice cold bite of the frozen lake
We encounter the spirit of naught
Naught which has given, naught that we will take
And the holler seems farther with every thought

I am a soul sick woman in the body of a child
A child with formlessness untoward
I wish to run as fast as the stallions, bucking wild
But I’m stuck here in the yard

When you push your eyes to the horizon
Do you feel that stirring, longing, yearning
Deep and tender heartless feeling
Leaves the mind inside the body reeling
When you tip your face up to the endless sun
Do you feel that wars inside we only narrowly won
The civil conflict, the trenches, blood in buckets subdued
The maladapted, anachronistic, bad attitude
I am forgiven for all my double-hearted shame
Tell me, if you can, what is my name

We could have a kind of farm,
I suggest,
With a little shop attached,
We could make jam and lemon curd,
Maybe chutney or,
Other things in little packaged jars,
I could bake things,
You could sell paintings there too,
We would only grow vegetables,
And fruit,
We would cook things with love,
Labour the earth with love,
Live together in love,
I feel sure that I could work the soil,
I have always felt an uncertain hard need in my bones,
To give something back to Mother Nature,
And I grew up in the country,
So I feel sure I would acclimatise,
But it is only a fantasy,
A sort of a story,
Even though it does sound nice either way.

The air was crisp and faintly green
The wind was light, the scene serene.
I gazed upon a sprawling field,
As viridescent waves revealed
A lone black cat, soldiering on.
His eyes as verdant as the lawn.

He strode with purpose, without pause.
He writes his tale with the path he draws.
Black dagger, shimmering bright,
Piercing the grass, a shard of night.

Where was he going with such haste?
What delights of life would he taste?
It did not matter to him nor I,
But he knew a freedom that could not die.

I daydream often of that field,
And of the life that it might yield.
To trot assuredly through lush domain,
The burden of choice all that remains.
To feel the wind upon one’s face,
The grass and sun, a warm embrace.

The black cat’s life proffers this wisdom,
The path is forward that leads to freedom.