A Tree Telling of Orpheus
White dawn. Stillness. When the rippling began I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog Didn’t stir; the leaves of my brothers
Celebration
Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day. Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors, Deft hands. And every prodigy of green – Whether it’s ferns or lichens or needles Or impatient points
Psalm Concerning the Castle
Let me be at the place of the castle. Let the castle be within me. Let it rise foursquare from the moat’s ring. Let the moat’s waters reflect green plumage of ducks, let the
The Quest
High, hollowed in green Above the rocks of reason Lies the crater lake Whose ice the dreamer breaks To find a summer season. ‘He will plunge like a plummet down Far into hungry tides’
In California During the Gulf War
Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among Trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts, The yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought, Certain airy white blossoms punctually Reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink,
To the Reader
As you read, a white bear leisurely Pees, dyeing the snow Saffron, And as you read, many gods Lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian Are watching the generations of leaves, And as you read
Wedding-Ring
My wedding-ring lies in a basket As if at the bottom of a well. Nothing will come to fish it back up And onto my finger again. It lies Among keys to abandoned houses,
Stepping Westward
What is green in me Darkens, muscadine. If woman is inconstant, Good, I am faithful to Ebb and flow, I fall In season and now Is a time of ripening. If her part Is
The Avowal
As swimmers dare To lie face to the sky And water bears them, As hawks rest upon air And air sustains them, So would I learn to attain Freefall, and float Into Creator Spirit’s