I came outside early yesterday with my iced coffee and my morning book (non-fiction in the morning, novels in the evening, that's my rule) -- I came outside, sat down at the patio table, looked up at the sky and said, "Oh, wow."

It was that deep, that blue, that -- I don't know -- that over-it-all.

Today, awake too early and once again outside with my iced coffee and my morning book, I'm listening to birds. A noisy chorus is going on,with a cardinal soloing over the top. A goldfinch is sitting on the far fence. This early in the day I can hear traffic sounds in the distance -- a far-off mash-up of sound, that I don't notice in the afternoon. The expressway is more than a mile away -- am I hearing all the cars and trucks between here and there? The sunlight is making occasional appearances, so that the maple leaves overhead are dark green and light green, the bits and pieces of contrast you might be confounded by in a large jigsaw puzzle. Early morning walkers and runners pass by, solitary. (Funny how when I get out of bed I am never struck by the impulse to go for a walk.) A squirrel stands up and pounds her white furry chest not six feet from my chair.

June 9, 2020. There will be storms this afternoon, with high winds according to the weather alerts on my phone.

And what else will the day bring? Floods of words, torrents of words, in emails, news feeds, social media. Solos from those with a platform, like the cardinal on the electrical wire a few minutes ago. Mostly a roar in which no one thing stands out for its beauty or clarity or depth. Chest-beating, like my friend the squirrel. Push and pull, light and dark, no firm truth. Humanity's self-consciousness at loose flooding the world.

I might rather be the squirrel who just now leaped across the grass in one, two, three, symmetric arches, gentle feed leaping from the ground, now threading under the weeds and reappearing with a rustle near the fence. Uncomplicated, with a consciousness all her own, as mysterious to me as the depth of blue in the sky.

Two Poems
Spring 2020



It’s warm for early March and drizzling.
Inside the coffee shop the barista
Presides, pulls the shots and clatters cups
across the counter.
Customers find their corners, stare at their phones.

Sisters share the brocade sofa,
And recite their news to one another
In the shelter of a tall potted plant.
“She doesn’t.”
“It’s only.”
“Who knows?”

Spring is far away.





My house, my house, my aging house.
Popping, peeling paint,
windows rotting lightly through the years.
It stands. It shelters,
Leans a little less than square.

Weeds grow tall, forsythia wild
Around the basketball hoop
Straight and sturdy in the yard.
Where are the boys who dribbled,
Turned, and shot from the court below,
Bouncing their angry edges hard
against the fiberglass backboard?

My house, my house, my aging house.
Herbs tumble over the dirt
New shoots green on last year’s woody stems.
Ancient chives and tarragon sweet.
Sage for blessing, thyme for spice.

My hand brushes the lavender,
Whose ancient fragrance
Guards my woolens from moths,
My senses from sleeplessness.