The lamb and her flock
By the call of the ****
Lived in peace, day in and day out
For the Shepard kept them safe
From the wolves and the wraiths
Danger the lamb lived without
But then one day,
While the herd searched for hay
The lamb was caught in a stream
The sheep searched and sought
But they could find her nought
As the rapids swallowed her screams.

The lamb woke, eyes wide
Loudly she cried
The sound masked as though under a hood
For there she did stand
Between tree's so grand
Underneath the Great Wolf's woods.
"Where are you going, little lamb,
These woods are no place for a ram"
Said a voice that growled and snarled.
The little sheep turned
Face gentle and firm
To see the great wolf, unstartled.
"I'm sorry your highness
Please forgive my shyness
My family, haven't seen them in miles
I beg, instead of roam,
Let me into your home,
And let me stay with you for awhile?"

The wolf was taken aback
An answer it lacked
To this creatures complete lack of fear
"I know you're naive
But with a twitch i could cleave,
So please lamb, lend me your ear.
I rule this forest
The birds join in chorus
In fear of my strength they could see
So I ask you this little beast
On you I could feast
So why are you not scared of me?"

"Well because you've done me no wrong
And I've lost my own throng
My trust, I place unto you
Oh great wolf of these woods
I beg, if you could,
Become my family, too?"
"Your family, you say?
You should be my prey
But this, I shall promise to you
For your bravery today
With me, you may stay
My home shall be yours, too"

Hours became days
And in little ways
The lamb grew to love the beast
In their little den
They soon became friends
The lamb wished these days would not cease
But along came the Shepard
His flock sickly and peppered
Calling the little lamb forth
"Oh lamb, you've been found,
But the herd's sick, chased by hounds,
The cure only found to the north".

"Wolf, I must leave
My family needs me"
The lamb exclaimed, fire in her eyes
"My sweet little waif
Your flock I'll keep safe"
The wolf replied, not intending to lie
So to the north the lamb trekked
And at the cave, the wolf wreaked
And fought and bit at the hounds
They came in the night
To feast and to fight
The sick sheep, easy prey abounds

The wolf sat in the dark
her white fur just in stark
Contrast to the black night around
Her fangs cracked and chipped,
Her claws ground and clipped,
Her blood soaked deep in the ground
Yet she would not fall
To foes great and tall
She'd fight, lips caked in foam
For she could not rest
Her strength she would test
Until her lamb would come home

The lamb shambled along the path
Fearing only the forest's wrath
On her journey back to the world she's known
The land she had seen
The knowledge she's gleaned
Would help her reap the seed she'd sown
She could not stop or seize
As she stomped through the trees
Her white wool never even touched comb
For the cure she had found
So she soon would hear the sound
Of her wolf howling back in their home

The lamb arrived at the cave
Almost unscathed
By the evil that ruled the green
But the sight before her
Made her heart stir
A sight she wished she had not seen
"My wolf, dear wolf" she cried
And beside her she lied
The beast's chest gently lowered then rised.
"Please wolf, not you,
Whatever you do,
Please, do not close your eyes"

"My dear lamb, I'm sorry,
But this cannot do
Your last favor was the last I could do for you"
For these sheep I shall give
The life I had to live
That is all I can do
Now then, my dear
Please, don't shed a tear
For dying's fine, if it's for you"

The lamb could not oblige
And weeped on the wolve's hide
Tears soaking deep in her fur
Her wounds began to mend
Thanks to her dearest friend
And inside, she felt her heart stir
"Now see here lamb, I cannot die
Not well there's tears still in your eye"
The wolf chortled and cradled the ram
"I can't leave you be
Because, don't you see
I'm your wolf, and you are my lamb"

I’ve sat on a bare-damp chair.
out on the North deck
where the moss blurs the lines
between itself and algae and lichen
and me.  Me, who wouldn’t know such a line
if it were less blurred...I’m not so sharp as all that.


I set my glasses down on a stone table.
Beside the cold-soon tea.
I watch the wind coming, first through the reeds.
And then shifting the banana leaves.
And soon the birch curtain crowding out my
writing place.  My righting place.

The labyrinth is hosting some flowers.  A dragonfly alights on an altar of crystal
and stone and birch branch.  And offerings.  
The dragonflies seems to (me to) re-write spider lines
or maybe ley lines.  A frog just leaped from a tree past my feet.
I’ve lost my word lines, my throughline.
This frog is now in the leaves by the ivy under the bees.
Looking so green.  Leaf droppings dropping on its head.
It’s green head.  Like an emerald in a mountain’s side.

Now a rustle.  Just beyond.  But not that far.  Like feet away.  But beyond.
Another distance.  Another limit.  Another world.  A bank-robbery escape-mode
Squirrel is making off with what it made off with from the free-to-all and undefended
(and legal, too) pear tree in the far yard.  It leaped upon the birch trunk and then, startled to find me unstartlingly well...just here.  And unstartled.  Paused to set its claws in bark.
It teeth gripping as fifth grip the rind of an unripe pear, its size, if I might compare,
the size of its head without the ears, without the hair.  This unrepentant squirrel leaped                  from
     here
to
     there
all of which was over there but just there so basically here.  (Just not here here, more there.)  It found its place to contemplate me.  To observe.  It made no offer.  But of itself.  Which, really, is all that we can do.  It chuffed a few times but it seemed to me that this was more to do with why-not-give-this-a-try-but-I-don’t-know-why.  It’s belly flush to gray birch bark.  It’s tail extended, and caught by a breeze that the leaves were not informed of.  A deceiving breeze.
Soon - which wasn’t soon, it was minutes - the squirrel scrambled up the birch and branch-to-branched its way to overhead and then out of sight.  I may have smelled of peanuts as I’d just emptied a jar.  I may have been the deceiver.  I may be the lone believer that I might know at all.

The frog hasn’t yet moved.


Something is buzz-whistling.  In the grass?  The trees?  The soil?  The sound rises and the tone
shifts.  The pitch lifts.  I cannot say if it is insect.  I cannot say if it is amphibian.  I cannot say if it is electric and thus man and thus unwelcome.  Cicada?  Frogs?  A hummingbird just fooled me into thinking I knew something about speed.  Something about color.  Something about birds.
Something about Nature.  Something about need.  Something about life.  Something about something about my self.  A partial-second lesson.  The teacher came and went.  The teachings stayed behind in mind.  I have so much work to do.

The far birch, placed in the yard for a long-ago dog
seems to offer up a peach harvest this year.
(At least when my glasses are off.)
The landscaper says that all the birches are yellowing this summer
this year this near to the midsummer and this far from the far flung
and far colder cold slumber of December and November and October.

The blue spruce has a still-for-the-first-time-this-season small flock
of oriole.  Or sunset-breasted, warbler wren throated tipped somethings.
I count seven.  Or six.  No, eight.  Wait.  Nine.  Uh, now eight.
Oh, there’s one!  Oh, no matter.  There’s some.
Too flighty and flittery each blur-glance I’ve had all year.  And I've tried each time
to secure them (sharply) in my lens.

The ducks converse as they arrive at the pond’s far edge.  About to traverse the
turtle-hiding waters, the en-flowered pond’s surface, the distance between heard and seen.
I reach for my glasses.  The birch leaves in yellow have fallen and lied.  Belied to believed.
There are no birds in the tree.  That I can see.  That I care to see.  Autumn come early.

A hawk glides past my edge-of-can’t-quite-see.  It’s loping-like arc its own pleasure...to me.
And, I imagine, it.  The meadow is blushing in purple, ironweed.  The jewelweed, too is a star-field of twinkling orange.  A constellation by day.  A bowl by the winter-blooming something (jasmine?) is concentrically coming awake as drip drip drippings are drop drop dropping.  A yellow-spiked caterpillar treks through the detritus of the unkempt bits of the beside-the-garden which isn’t so much a garden as a place I once planted and once planned.  A spider fast-ropes down to investigate and, as it happens, to pester.  The caterpillar twists and tumbles.  Righting itself, it plods on in its stretch-curl way as the spider ascends to the invisible upper home in its way.  The frog hasn’t moved but I notice and note its **** has two bumps.  Like its bulbous eyes in its front which, as I notice and note is spear-shaped as is its hind.  I wonder at defenses.  It is still.  It still is still.  It’s stillness is still stilling.  Until...I move on.  My fastest is not footed but mindful.  Not mindful but of mind.  I am of a mind to move the mind along.  The caterpillar closes the distance.  What a distance to it it must be.  It’s face is black as an undersea shadow.  It has spikier spikes of black here and there.  Likely in some pattern but my mind has moved and so, here and there it will be.  My story.  My pattern.  My refusal to change.

The mushrooms where the spider met the yellow fellow, though.  Sesame-seeded.  Decorated.  Pimpled.  Bejeweled.  A tawny cup beside a stone behind the frog.  Soft mustard-dotted.  But now!  A new frog where the old new frog had been.  This one a leopard toad.  I think.  (I shouldn’t think.)  Browns upon browns with stripes and blots and dots.  Tans and browns.  At the end of the birch twig is now the first frog.  The green-headed bumpy-butted one.  The leopard in tiger lily patches watches the caterpillar (a different one?) clamber though the unswept unkempt.  

The frog, beside me in ceramic keeps time for the timeless.  The throat bellowing.  As though feeding a fire somewhere where Earth is turned to plow.  We all make our own ends, don’t we?

at that your, unstartled completely, without
hesitation because hips
                                          (an electric fire; inside me)


                       SPRings

to my lips
that fleetly depart
my face to be
where they are longing
to incise
the placid unhaired
of your

                             between thighs
                             velvet forever
                             notch