I have been painting

I have been painting--not masterworks--
just chicken coops, bird houses.
A pan, a roller. Whatever paint
I can find stored in the cellar.
A blue chicken coop with eggshell trim.
A rich cream rough plywood
Purple Martin tower.
Layers of paint for my egg layers.
Layers of paint in the plastic pan.
Gathering in the sights,
the sounds of birds;
the speckled, brown eggs,
the sloughed off feathers.
At the end of the day, obsessively
peeling paint strips from the plastic
tray basin--a scurf
of cream over blue, a beauty
for discarding--the daily business
of the universe, the steady breath
of making and un-making.

Night has a blue all its own

Night has a blue all its own--
a color so deep and long,
a shade that bells with coyotes,
that chimes with frogs.
Night has a blue so concordant
I close my eyes and listen to it
long after I've returned to the light
of morning.

Of things that dash and things that stay

Heron poised upon the hill--
a javelin of time held still.
Arrested barks of distant dogs.
Fleeting lives of fish and frogs.
A strangely secret oriole.
A crayfish in a river hole.
Tadpoles skittering in the silt.
Celandine poppy's transient gilt.
Dewdrops on a yarrow flower.
The sun that watches, hour on hour.
Ephemeral constant interplay
of things that dash and things that stay.