So many levels
Of vision, of existence
Each a door into its own universe

What can you see?
It depends on how you look
A telescope, a microscope?

Or how you travel
A plane, a train, a car, a bike, afoot
Each different speed reveals a different world

Summer’s heat slows a walk
Along familiar paths
Allowing eyes to see
The things they missed before

My garden grows by God’s green hands
I merely mend the trails

I wonder wayward ‘round the wood
Escaped from jealous jails

I find a soft, sweet solace there
Where human logic fails

I am drawn to wounded things
The tattered butterfly
The lonesome dove, the long-lost love
The way we live and die

The terrapin with broken shell
The tree by tree rubbed raw
The broken leaf, the mother’s grief
The mouse in my cat’s maw

Why focus I on things that sigh?
Why not sing happy songs?
To live and die, it helps to cry
The wounds help right the wrongs

We take dawn for granted
Not the wood thrush
He had no way of knowing
If it would come again

When you take to your canoe,
Avoid deep water
Instead, slide slowly long the shore
Hide beneath the hanging oak
Wait upon the show

There lie places of abundance
Transitions
Wake to sleep
Life to death
Water to earth to air

The spider taken by the wasp,
The pointless web remained
Betrayal for the butterfly

There is a silence these spring nights
No human god can fill
I’ve listened faithfully at dark
To hear their lonesome trill
But now I know it’s past the time
For return of the Whip-poor-will