Reflections and notes on the relationship of art to nature and of nature to art from along Warwoman Creek, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Katuah Province of Turtle Island, where the light, the dark, the seasons, the time of deep past, deep present and deep future all mix in alchemal mists to reveal and hide and transform these slopes, shaded coves, bright rivers, deep forests and me, and together sustain me and my art.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

DEATH, AT NIGHT


               

                DEATH, AT NIGHT

                It is the long thing
                with fingers and a mouth
                swallowing the moment
                and all the light there is.

                A dreamless ocean
                shallowing at its edge -
                a marsh, an inlet,
                in late fall or early winter
                when the weather changes.

                The night,
                long, but afterwards,
                like my neighbor Annie,
                who after the death of her husband
                of fifty years, the next day
                swept clean the porch
                and set out pots of flowers
                along its edge - geraniums
                to meet a broad and silenced day.

                An abandoned shore
                of arrival and departure,
                the slack tide washing and washing,
                the beach swept clean
                reaching and reaching
                beyond the reach
                of ever seeing.


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