Be quiet or go home…

If you walk along in silence…

 perhaps you’ll notice the geese at the other side of the river…

and the leaves that are beginning to fall …

 

 landing in puddles of love…

and turning color…

while shadows dance like lace in the breeze…

and Nature arranges her still life.

Stopping at the farm…

sunflowers all along the edge of the field…

where organic goodness grows…

into the store… lots of good things to choose!

the old barn, built in 1870…

painted truck, happy to stay put with grass growing in its bed…

 oh wow…

 see you later!

I’ll return my dreams to earth

A secret came a week ago though I already

knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.

The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds

are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.

I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-

weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation

and now they’re roosting within me, recalling

how I had watched them at night

in fall and spring passing across earth moons,

little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing

on their way north or south. Now in my dreams

I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,

the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying

me rather than me carrying them. Next winter

I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado

and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching

on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye

and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

– Jim Harrison, “Birds Again”

Hollowed in Green

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’

they cry, but as the sea

climbs to a lunar magnet

so the dreamer pursues

the lake where love resides.

 

– Denise Levertov