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.

Crayfish

Crayfish, crawdad,
mudbug, crawfish,
little river lobster,
zip, bump, swish.

Tools Hope For Use

                                                             --for Joe

Here is a man whom rusted metal follows home
like strange ducklings. Ancient farm implements,
grizzled trapper's chains and shackles, vaguely
Amish hand tools all gather round him,
attentively leaning the way a dog's head does
when it is particularly curious or hungry.
Tools hope for use; metal hungers for occupation.
The greatest insult equipment is ever asked to bear
is that of being made merely decorative.
The souls of wagon wheels and oxen plows die
when planted in flower beds to be leaned on and seen.
Perhaps they sense that here is a man who
does not care if they are ever swans
but seeks to use them as they long to be used--
to make them gleam only if their purpose
is to be sharpened. So they follow him
like strange ducklings hoping to grow back
into their capable ugly duck selves
once more.

Wisdom of Birds

In the dim, just-stirring hours
of a pre-migration March morning
the voice of a slate-colored junco,
like an insistent telephone,
called me from reverie upon my pillow.
Little cousin chickadee,
up from Carolina,
piped his reminiscence
of days closer to the dawn.
Little birds do not bring secrets
to me as it is said they do to some.
Instead the sparrows and nuthatches
remind me no light is to be wasted
with sleeping. Though there is time enough
for gathering seeds and sewing
there is none to spare
lest I forgo the Spring.

Brilliant Like Love

                              -- for Elaine

In my heart you are one
with ice and snow, creating
light in Winter.
I do not say you are cold
but brilliant--
     brilliant like the love
light has for the untouched
snow of a January morning--
broad flakes luminous,
singular in the sun.

You come upon my thoughts
like Spring comes to Goldfinches--
the hint of your approach brightens
the dun emotions of my waiting heart
just as March gilds burnished plumage.
As hyacinths wake to purple March,
the knowledge of you enlivens me.

I greet the sense of you like July
greets the Great Blue Heron
standing brave and tranquil
in Summer's waiting waters.
Just so have you ever stood
independent, poised in my memory.

As the Sugar Maple welcomes
on-rushing Autumn,
I invite the future of a sorority
not crowned in scarlet
but rooted in common umber
redolent with shared memory,
nascent with promise
of the bold Septembers
and Octobers yet to come.