Magic is full on this day ... 

bewitched as it is with a snowfall   

out of dreams. 

And I wanted bluebirds.

So here they are ...  

flying all about, an amazement of color

in the brilliant white expanse.

The spell that is a white Christmas this day 

holds fast the mind

that conjured it—

out of desperate wanting—

and binds it to wonder. 

Imagine what else I might ask

Imagine what I could do in a year of days

desperately wanting every good thing,

all that could be, 

and all I could become.

 

happiness doesn't happen, you choose it

out of your own will of mind and spirit.

love, however, apparently does its own choosing

out of its own purpose and time ...

it happens.

for now, let it be enough for me,

choosing to be happy with your voice

the infinite reach of your mind

the delicious wanting.

but as for this love that chose us 

it is here, and in the time that is left

in what fellowship of mind shall we take it?

to will an extraordinary thing into being

or leave it as it lies, in some past life?

I do not want to be clean of all moral turpitude.

I want to be held.

But the sheer volume of your virtue 

could fill oceans

and build mountains

and outshine all the stars in the sky.

Who am I to ride the wind

over the vastness of such self-mastery?

you do not know the duality of our being

whereas it is my most sacred understanding

of why we are here

and so you still sit there                                               

not knowing what you want to do 

with your one precious life

I can’t reconcile melancholy 

In this soft September sun.

There’s you, still, 

and the knowing.

An uncertain breeze 

whiffles the long hanging branches 

of the tallest weeping cherry in town …

I'm sitting still on the porch,

breathing in all my good fortune

still inhaling, and exhaling, still here. 

But the music of my mind is a bluesy 

passacaglia and fugue

with your face on it.

Isn’t it just like us to be all 

augmented this and diminished that,

all agnus dei and alleluia 

and no amen.  

 

April snuck by incognito

like nothing much, 

shrugging its way, March into May,  

with occasional snow and muddy feet.

a blur of days, a malaise,

of murk and purple and marsh

like an untended unmade mind.

But the strike of sun at 5:22a

puts an end to all that.

Now it's frenzy and flutter, 

force feeding tiny jaws 

from hard won scratch—

the insufferable squirrel 

having laid claim 

to the seed tray  

at first light.

the geese are flying in low over the river

and spring comes on 

chatting up finches and bluebirds

all zippety-do-dah and fare-thee-well 

on a twenty-seven degree morning

that dials up to fifty on a shiny afternoon.

the spring Maine sun fools the mind into shirtsleeves

willing the body to warm itself 

pulling in the wild blue sky

selling it with an easy nod to walkers on the road

gunning it, top down, neck scarf flying ... 

the floor heater going full blast

and it is just enough humor to form a staff 

to swing against the sea of melancholy

and stiffen the walls of memory— 

me here, wrapped in wonder

you there, leaking with uncertainty  

day six without your voice, your words, your mind. 

—were we ever "us"?  all is a wisp,

a filament of mental reckoning 

 a bed unmade, a dream unslept, silent.

what remains of the hours we knew so well? 

where's the reality of who we were?  

only in the words that poured out of us 

so easily, brilliantly, tenderly... 

our words made us real, until they didn't. 

this love doesn't run on time, apparently,

like a train on a pocket watch.

no, it lazes along 

like a train on its own track

haphazard, willynilly even,

then suddenly comes out of nowhere

and blows through a crossing of far roads, 

bearing down,

coming hard and fast and loud

across an unlikely stretch of road

that ran between the big house, on a fairway

and a small house, on a river

... fifty years having passed

in no time at all ... 

sounding exactly like a tornado

would it be too much to ask ...

would it be too great a task

to forbear the bully 

who has sullied our national conscience

from rising ever again ...

would it be too much to hope

the slope of his descent 

too slippery

for the minions to follow his miscreant mind ...

would it be too much to imagine 

the red regions of the heartland restored of heart ...

riven and reborn

without fear of differentness,

armed only with the weapons of well-being?

what will it take to shake off the lies

that bind?

how can it be too much democracy for some

who want the power of the people

to deny it by all the people?