Poems

Stranger

Did your lover break your heart,

make you cry,

leave you behind and alone,

dreams washed away in the rain?

Will the sun still rise

and will you ever find the one

who can fill the hole in your heart?

What do you do when

your love goes away

and leaves not a trace?

You pick up the pieces

and sleepwalk along,

living by rote,

doing what you’ve always done

but moving through the day

with this companion

who’s always there,

an emptiness that walks beside you,

the unwanted stranger

who’s entered your life uninvited.

You’re a hollow shell, but you go on

because there’s nothing else to do

but put one foot in front of the other

until the numbness leaves

and you start to come back to life,

taking pleasure once more

in the beauty of landscape

and the smiles and laughter of friends.

At last you feel like the next day might be

something to look forward to,

and you’re living again,

the world once more bright with possibility.

Like Hand in Glove

Walking through a stand of old cottonwoods

down to the banks of the Rio Grande,

I watch Canada geese

float peacefully in shallow waters

near a sandbar exposed by

the poverty of water from dams and drought.

They’re Daoists in perfect harmony with the river,

serene and at home in their winter niche,

at one with their place in a desert river ecosystem,

a corner of the universe they’re masters in.

I admire their apparently untroubled existence,

fitting like hand in glove here,

at ease floating on the river’s deep blue

reflection of New Mexico sky.

They don’t argue with the world.

They don’t worry about climate change,

only the month-to-month and year-to-year

variations in the landscape

over their span of experience,

changes they absorb over time

without the idea of future.

They know only the moment,

and the moment is all they need.

While they float here in peace and occasionally

fly off honking to find a new resting or feeding spot,

I aspire, dream, worry, struggle, and strive –

and stand in wonder at the river-hugging Bosque ,

at our limping, astonishing blue dot planet,

and a cosmos outrunning my mind’s reach.

I bow to the geese’s purity in acceptance of their world,

while I’m married to my human

bent to desire and aspire,

till death do me part.

A Tear in the Web

The world is tilting over the edge.

We’ve torn the web of fibers

that holds the world together

and upset its delicate balance.

The coral reefs have answered us.

The poles have answered us.

The winds over the seas are answering us.

Drought makes its insidious creep

across the American West.

Monster fires burn out of control,

followed by flash floods,

and the oceans eat the edges of continents.

Earth sheds its tears,

but it has no fear of us.

It knows it will outlast us.

It will heal its wounds in its own way in the end.

It’s only warning us now,

but ultimately it will avenge the insults

and impose a new balance of its own making,

slow and relentless,

without mercy for who is in the way.

Can you hear the thunder? It’s closer than it was . . .

Earth and life will survive –

as microbes trade DNA

to mutate daily, adapt, and thrive.

Insects and animals and plants will evolve,

and a new order will organically emerge.

We may not be invited to the party.

Bosque Spring

It’s late April and warm,

but in the Bosque

curling up against the Rio Grande

the trees are still bare,

only a small branch here and there

sprouting any leaves at all.

Disappointed, I came down here

hoping for evidence of Spring’s jubilant arrival.

Two days later I come back

and every cottonwood wears a bright green crown!

The whole forest is a carnival,

alive and exuberant in the sun’s rays

set off by an electric blue sky,

and I’m no longer holding my breath for Spring.

Drought

The wind complains today

that it is thirsty.

It passes over

with nothing to offer us,

searching for a drink

somewhere to the east.

Wet Dust

The acrid odor of wet dust

rises all around me

as rain begins to kiss ground

that has not been moist

for two months.

The sleeping desert opens an eye.