The lake a tabletop of glass
The sky a brilliant blue
The newborn sun a blinding blast
Showcasing every hue

Maples leaning out from shore
Admire their colored coats
Swallows dip and dive and soar
As fog lifts from the boats

Each shifting scene begins to die
The moment it is born
Grab your paper, pen and try
Save each before its gone

But have you saved a butterfly
Pinned to paper with a thorn?

Find yourself a friendly fire
Let this poem burn
If its beauty you aspire
To the lake return

Atop the breezy bluff
O’erlooking all the lake
A flash of red, amidst the sea of green
Summer’s seen enough
Autumn stirs to wake
At Sol’s command, the black gum starts to turn

The world has changed today
Unnoticed by the throng
But some have stood still long enough to feel
The cry calls of the jay
The shadows getting long
The coming of these first sure signs of fall

These some have watched the season
Come and go and come
They know this show shall go and come again
They know this change is reason
That’s caused their mind to roam
Back to all that pleasure or that pain

Their bodies still remember
Those times both cruel and kind
That happened this exact same time of year
One wonders what past ember
Fanned by this fall wind
Blazed back to life to cause their smile or tear

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