It's Early, 5 AM

It's early, 5 AM, and the sun is just now lighting
the sky over the lake, darkness fading into blue, a pink-
vermilion giving way to clouds blurring into a new day;
and the sounds of the morning are low, barely heard,
the trees, their leaves and branches arustle, waking up,
the birds, too, unseen, their morning calls echoing softly,
and someplace off in the distance a dog barks, up early,
with me, watching the morning rise over the eastern shore;
a slight breeze is cool on my face, my bare feet,
but the coffee warms me, my hands wrapped around
a simple mug, standing here, listening, alone,
scarcely aware beyond this moment, a baroque morning composed;
and overhead, an eagle flies, content, silent on the wind, rising. 

In Springtime's Warming

It was, a week ago, ice, 

frozen solid to bear my weight,

hold me up crossing this stream

meandering through these Maine woods

I, too, meander, out this spring day,

sneaking out, the chores and to do list

left behind to clear my head of winter,

clogged again, or perhaps still frozen, solid;

but a week hence, today, it flows wildly, black and clear,

the ice thin and cracked and broken,

and snow-fed, rushing lake-ward, oblivious

of rocks and roots and obstacles, winter’s debris

pushed aside or carried along, a white-capped

torrent following a shallow path made wider

and deeper, its strength and power growling,

growling as it grows, constant now in my ears,

focused as it is on a downhill course, coursing

to the lake, to an end greater than itself,

feeding itself on spring, feeding itself into the lake,

a lake slow to wake in springtime’s warming,

sluggish perhaps, ice-laden, and breaking up at the edges’

opening, leisurely spreading outward, stream-fed,

a stream a week ago but ice, frozen solid

to bear my weight and hold me up;

and I, I am like the lake right now,

slowly waking into spring, stream-fed

by life’s great strength and power coursing, but slow,

slowly opening up in my own time, leisurely,

meandering here through these Maine woods,

sneaking out to clear my head of winter,

slowly waking up to the summer months ahead.

Family History

Before we were who we’ve become, now,

we were, it is surmised, Druids, an ancient

people, iron-age men of legend and lore,

made monsters cannibalizing, sacrificing

others, and practicing magic, a feared people;

and perhaps we were, Druids, spiritual

people, reverent, seeking a closeness

with nature’s world, a shaman’s healing,

fully creative, a creative self, and artful,

curing our infertility of spirit

with the Oak and Mistletoe, and, sages all,

accessing a profound wisdom that sustains us

as it has these centuries of Wings passing onward,

reincarnated souls of Druids and Puritans

and who we’ve become, since.

Mud Season Revisited

Mud Season starts where the pavement ends,

where a country road, lush in summer’s months

and autumn’s color’s a rustic charm, softens,

where now the frozen earth thaws in the snowbanks’

melting, banks of ice and snow pushed back,

these long winter months of cold and isolation

giving way to warmer temperatures lingering,

rising well above freezing, into the 40s,

a warmth we’ve longed for, spring’s arrival,

forgetting again in our eagerness this country road

turned to mud - mud and muck and mire - mud season,

and we aim the car to get away, escape the winter doldrums,

dropping now to the lowest gear to pull us through,

aiming where the hill seems less muddy, less slick,

less rutted, a guessing game, jerking the wheel left

and right in a zig-zag course, pulling the car

this way and that, opposite to the oozing grab of sodden earth,

away from the edge that would stop us still, mired

in a fine mud, steering now a course for the other side

where the road dries out, flattens, a brief respite

before the next hill and mud and muck and mire returns;

but slow and steady, heady at the end of the day,

we course a cautious drive to home again,

home at the end of a country road in mud season.