Here in the Forest

Living here in the forest

     you quickly learn about loss

            and the necessity of moving on;

perhaps it’s survival of the fittest

     or just nature’s way,

            life and death, survival or extinction;

but I can’t help believing, though,

     even woodpeckers, loons, and mother

            foxes mourn the death of a child.

The Wee Folk

                              (1)

remain hidden and silent, undisturbed

by us who still believe and seek them,

revealing themselves in their time, perhaps

when we least expect it, but a glimpse caught

or a voice heard in the silence of sunrise.

 

                              (2)

Or in the evening’s stillness, dragon light

on the western brim’s horizon, the peepers

and the shoreline’s soft kiss, and the shadowy

sounds of faint laughter, a cheerful chorus sung

beneath the fallen night, starlit, like a slight breeze

blowing in the evening’s stillness, unmoving;

the wee folk overheard, imagined, unseen, hidden,

perhaps, among the brush and the brambles.

 

                              (3)

And from an eye’s corner, movement,

stilled in our turning, a dash, a splash

of color, faintly seen, subtle, now gone;

but we know, we believers seeking, we have

been visited, allowed a glimpse, a flash,

a sense of the wee folk we share the day with,

a brief moment of a reality shared, the faery

realm, freed now to live our own faery lives.

Here at the Lake: 7 Days in April

                                 1.

End of the day,

the cool of April’s night settling in,

and a mug of hot tea to stave off the chill

of early spring hastening its way to summer.

                                    2.

A crisp cold spring morning this early April,

the mud frozen and predictions of snow,

nothing much nor lasting long, just spring

reminding us again of where we live, patience

for the season’s changing in its own time.

                                    3.

If it must rain in April, these April showers expected,

let them germinate, then, the seeds that give rise

to the blooms and blossoms of spring, May’s flowers,

spring colors bringing us out of the doldrums

we carry forward from the winter’s ice and cold

.                                   4.

The shoots are shooting upward,

the crocus and the dandelion, lilies

and daffodils that border my garden,

violets, greens and yellows, orange ablaze.

                                    5.

And the spring winds blow gently,

turning fierce in the longer days’ warmth,

spring winds to melt the ice and snow lingering,

revealing now my ragged lawn laid bare, the lake

opening up from ice to spring time flood.

                                    6.

My little plot of wildflowers, Ginny’s Garden,

is raked and clear and ready for the perennials

to return, free of any interference from me,

but to watch them sprout and grow and wonder

what they are, beyond the delight they bring.

                                    7.

And so we revel in spring’s return, longer days

and warmers temps, April showers melting snow

and the prospect of new growth rising upward,

a new hope for the days and the seasons ahead,

drawing us together, a circle drawn, man

and nature, a hope renewed in spring’s

new birth, life and humanity cycling forward

like the stars’ constellations in motion,

ready now for the challenges ahead,

reawakened, refreshed, reaffirmed, and restored.

Neverland (ver. 2025)

In my younger clime,

Peter flew off the stage and out the window, bound

for Neverland, and we never questioned that, carried

away on happy thoughts and Pixie Dust, nothing more,

but try as I might, full of happy thoughts but short

of Pixie Dust, I remained grounded yet hopeful,

still believing we would lift off one day and follow

the second star to the right to the land of lost boys,

Mermaids and Pirates, Tinkerbell and Tootles,

 Indians brave, Capt Hook and a ticking crock.

But grown up, some, older and wiser and less easily tricked,

I vaguely remember the hidden wires barely visible

against the dark backdrop of a sky, a small detail

easily missed, easily forgotten, this man-made flight;

now flying was no longer possible, no rising off the floor,

and my childhood dreams were gone in waking, Pixie Dust

but the dust bunnies under my bed, swept away,

like youth, in my mother’s weekly cleaning.

But tonight, Peter has been outside my window, crowing, “er-er-e-er,”

and I felt myself rising again, a little, enough to remind me

of the happy thoughts, the Pixie Dust, and the second star

to the right, straight on till morning, and the world once more

seemed lighter, much younger, much more possible now

to fly without wires barely visible, for we can fly,

“we can fly, we can fly,” and I am again a lost boy returning,

Tootles and Tinkerbell, Capt Hook and a ticking crock,

the second star to the right and straight on to Neverland.