Good poems are like winter
When the fierce wind
Strips trees to X-rays
Nailed to the blinding blue

When the rain scoured air
Cleansed and clear
Pared down to Nothing
Reveals everything

When world, warmth-stripped
Left uncaring, cold
Shakes us awake
From our ambiguous dreams

Good poems are like winter
Much removed, little left
But those few remnants scream
With blood curdling power

Step outside
Walking slow
Cloud above
Sun below
Sky on fire
Rainbow

Heat relieved
Forest drenched
Dripping leaves
Thirst quenched

Almost dark
Firefly
Caught in hand
Letting go
Whip-poor-will
Bursting joy

Poem lines
No pen to write
Hurry home
So memory might
Capture all
I've seen tonight

Roaring breeze approaches
Freeing leaves of their raindrops
Left by morning shower

Too perfectly complete
Needing nothing
No wonder you were cruel
Each king needs a fool

You do not lack
You cannot pine
You have no needs
Like he who intercedes

All Present,
You can never know
Absence of a friend
Or joy at their return

All Knowing
You can't experience
Joy of epiphany
Or bliss of ignorance

Most High
You can never climb
A mountain or a Tree
Or hill of Calvary

What could you want,
Having all there is?
An olive mount,
A traitor’s kiss?

No wonder you came down
To wear that thorny crown

Waves on water
Hard north wind
Causing trees to bend
Driving **** across the lake
Then down into the mud

There mayfly nymphs do feed
On pollen seed
To fuel their transmigration

Seeking their ablation
Responding to the pull
When mother moon is full

Last week one could see
Across the valley
Through the trees
The sky was crystal blue
The air/light clear

Now the GREEN has come
Suffocating sight and sound
******* up the water
Drying out the ground

Warm air loving me to death
With its sweet breath

Cows chew on their cud
Sweet green grass
Entering their gut
Full of ancient worms
Fulfilling their cycle
This too shall pass

Just a week ago
Moisture in the ground
Footfalls fell so soft, so quiet
As we walked in churchly light

Mother earth was full
Until she felt the pull
That tidal call
Pulled into the canopy
By roots unfound, unseen
All to make the GREEN

Now the soil is bitter
As we make our way
We are betrayed
By crunching leaf litter

In the cool of the First morning
Wand’ring my own Eden
I am

The finger of God
Straightening a Trillium
While my cancer grows