Lucy

Loyalty to ashes and love to dust--
Lucy died on a cool-sunned day
and a cold front followed with rain
to blanket her.
Every tap of October sticks on siding
makes me turn to look for the ghost
of her black toenails on the kitchen floor.
The first time, after, that I sat on the porch swing,
the toll of a restless collar bell
heralded the arrival of the cat
to claim Lucy's head's place on my lap--
ginger fur does not seem quite as soft
as her black, folded ears under my hand.
Every dinner's table scraps go unclaimed.
She was just a dog, after all,
but grief is grief
all the same.

September

September, two-faced
lunatic king of dying summer
dresses in bold, rich flowers--
purple Aster novae-angliae,
Queen Anne's Lace--
wields Goldenrod,
manic heat,
oppressive humidity.
Next moment,
out through calico blue
Chicory, Aster linariifolius,
fringed with white lashes,
 Aster dumosus, Mist Flower,
peers the benevolent dotard face
of September
sighing soft breezes,
humming insect songs.

Phoebe

Phoebe never says a word.
She darts about my day, unheard.
She watches, jet-eyed, from her perch
silent as a nun in church.
In her somber habit, hale;
gray-black hood, flicking tail.
Confiding, clement, on her nest;
I like my sweet friend Phoebe best.

Red-Winged Blackbirds

In Red-Gold martial epaulets
the Blackbirds, crying epithets,
assault the storming Crow.

Ritual of Mays

Observe the strange camaraderie
of Labrador and Bumblebee.
As hours sink to deeper hours
Lab watches Bee; Bee flies to flowers.
Lab lunges to Bee's buzzing tune
which drifts about the afternoon.
Bee, ignorant of hopeless flight;
Lab, who snaps at bugs that bite
together pass fair weather days
in timeless ritual of Mays.

Brashness of Spring

Though Winter be a time to rest from joy,
in mute solemnity of contemplative color,
Always the brashness of blossoms
bursts more startling than Spring's
attendant lightnings. Who could withstand
a constant Spring--what heart
could continue to beat in ongoing
amazement at the feats of Hue?
When the green of grass is cut more keenly
than any emerald, and the sky mimics opal
with ever-changing fires, when only
the shaded Yellow Trout Lily and Common Violet
bow their heads, and the only modesty
is in the shy shades of forested Anemones,
still wary of Frost, whose heart can sustain
such exuberance?What ears could
withstand a never-ending triumph of birds?
Celebration, ever pealed by night-belling frogs and day-
reveling wrens must exhaust even the Sun-facing
hemisphere of Earth in the nearest swing of
her ellipse, and yet
and yet
when such cacophonous life exudes
do we not all try to pause? to breathe it in
and hold it through the long sigh of Summer
before the slow fall of leaves calls our thoughts
down from treetops to the solemnity
of Winter's rest again?

Spring's Ephemeral First Love of Bees

I picture kimonos-
poor silk-screened copies
of April's blossoming cherry tree.
These romantic garments
still less delicate than
Spring's ephemeral
first love of bees.