ISLAND COTTAGE for Frances Vaughan  Over the years and many visits, since no one was at home, imagination was my entry, allowed me morning coffee  on the small front deck, the privilege of touching down lightly, lingering there.  Today an invitation came from the poet whose cottage it happens to be. Inside, it is trig […]

FIRST WARM NIGHT  come, let us sleep with windows wide tonight a salty breeze like silk upon the skin the birds will wake us early, and the dog will want her walk and breakfast–come to bed my love, and dream of sippng wine beneath the flowering island trees. This narrow slice  of year is precious, […]

SAYING IT  Yellow forsythia has opened in arboreal silence above daffodils.  From dark branches and dry ground come thin-skinned flower tissues – organic star cups and trumpets alive with root juice and small perfumes.  Again the green calligraphy of leaves uncurled and the odorless foliage of tender species all around like limelight, white double tint […]

Pour  From mind to page, page to mind, or light  through window. Fluid like a swallow flight  lip of pitcher, lifted, tilted  as land tilts to sea, as sea is tipped by tide onto the shore,  everything spills into something else  These buttercups pour yellow on the grass; the snake flows  from his skin. My […]

SPRING COMES SLOWLY Spring comes slowly in these parts ~            Like an old woman in the produce aisle,            hungry for new asparagus and fiddleheads            suspicious of bright strawberries            too soon, too soon Spring comes slowly […]

THE  LYRICS OF SPRING   Melting. The thick crust of winter      that crystallized life      holding it captive Is broken. In its place run      splashing veins of ice water Between the rocks Along the paths All singing their freedom In voices that challenge     the pounding of the sea. […]

  The Moon to Her Godchild                      On the birthnight of her seventh year the child, Selene, has escaped to the tree-circled pond where she and her namesake meet.  Tonight she finds a gift of twisted silver, kneeling, immerses her arm to receive it, circlet of light, […]

FULL MOON NIGHT  last night the full moon rose like a silver island anchored in a moody sea of cloud, first calm, then storming bright lighthouse, clear signal, safe haven, tall highland last night the full moon rose like a silver island over your distant sea and, landlocked, my land there was a warm wind […]

LUNA REPRISE I remember you rising above the surf, your shadow an amber’d river, the three blue spruces edged in ash, your unrequited pearl light bluing the figures of summer houses suddenly full of languorous ambition.  Marilyn Ringer

STAY   have you often awakenedon a foggy morning, so muffled and still, and wondered if you have  lost your hearing? the voice from your dream echoes stay the voice on the wind in the very top of the trees whispers stay the deep voice of the far away tide calls stay the muskrat from […]

SPRING MIGRATION, MONHEGAN At first only silhouettes, too distant for detail. They approach, exhausted from the long journey. The flight, across miles charted only within them, is soon to be over for a while. Do they feel a sense of joy at the sight of the island? A sense of joy that mirrors what I […]

A LETTER NEVER MAILED (in memoriam) I cannot find any tracks of birds In the snow this morning But by the feeder – a trace of someone there. Could a seed fall in this great whirl of snow? Never! A small live foot had been and left its mark. Late August one hot day I […]

DUOLOGUE NIGHT As the world floats into darkness Shadows go their lonely way Eyes are closed No one speaks Total serenity James Cundy MANANA MAKES IT THROUGH THE NIGHT hot coffee and english muffins                         -on the rocks- cool early morning light dissolving the […]

BEACH GLASS – A PANTOUM The shock, the joy of recognition Green or aqua, sometimes brown, occasionally blue Fragments sanded soft, glass hissed into jewels Plucked from sandy shore on a summer’s day Collage of colour, a mason jar full The shock, the joy of recognition Finding something precious, unexpected Fragments sanded soft, glass hissed […]

 FOUR HAIKU FOR SPRING                                  Why these thoughts of spring?     Is it the smell of the air,            the light on the snow?                       […]

  WRITTEN ON THE MAINLAND  In all the moss-deep silences, And all the dappled wells Of silence, gray and green and gold, In closely woven spells  The trees make, in the island’s heart– Still half-uncaptured we Within ourselves must hear the sound Of slanting, murmurous sea.  It is an island’s value that Each least thing, […]

THE COMFORT OF A SMOOTH STONE  I collected stones like friends filled empty shelves with chunks of mountain granite their feldspar blushing pink in mica mirrors, crinoids, trilobites, brachipods those hard bodies of Ordovician sea stuff, gaping mouths of geodes flashing sharp crystal teeth, odd lumps of pock-marked pumice, a smorgasbord of conglomerate.  I collect […]

Epigraph: In winter a stone is frozen in place  when there is a thaw there is a space underneath  that fills in with dirt lifting the stone the stone doesn’t work its way up to the surface.  –Robert Thorson, Stone by Stone     Stones   Robert Thorson has a thing for stones. Moved here […]

  SLEEPWALKERS: MONHEGAN ISLAND They are unseen presences on the road, passing each other unaware on paths narrowed by aster and bayberry opening to the sea. They are walking through what was, step surely over tangles of juniper, shifting stones toward a day of particular happiness, of clear, full-throated praise. Far inland, wrapped and sheltered, […]

THAT JANUS MONTH Harry ambles by in his red blanket coat, circles his houses, mending, tending. Rita rouses to her routine and makes for Carina though Newt has left the island, his flying speech run off into silence. The clock ticks; a few finches worry about cats. Today there is no sea but for the […]