First Snow

Snowfall clads the virgin ground
Like a baby’s Christening gown
Or a bridal dress on a single bed.

Snow conceals the dying past
Dead leaves, bare trees, brown grass
Makes bearable the winter cold.

Sheaf and shoot, bush and tree
Exist as only memories
Of vanished autumn's glory

Bare nature bears no glory great
As first snow, what joy awaits
When winter wears her clothes.

Traveling Bones

Down there in Egypt we kept to the bones

Of Joseph the Hebrew, the great patriarch
We kept the dry bones on a string near the door
And on windy days they would clatter and rattle
Telling us who we have been.

Whenever we traveled, the bones traveled with us
In prison and palace, up tenement stairs
In flats and apartments, and all down the street
The traveling bones, the rattling bones
Were our memory and our reward.

When we took to the desert, we carried those bones
On sledges or and wagons, on camels and carts
Not resting or quiet, but clacking in time
Those elbows and ribs, they played out their rhythm
As we marched through sun and sand.

Just now they might feel when their exile is ended
And we come to their home, I cannot imagine
The traveling bones, the rattling bones
And we take their place in their unquiet slumber
As the rattling, clattering bones.

A Dogs Life

Your face hovers over me

paws on my shoulders

As I lay on he floor

On my back Looking up

And I marvel at all

Of the wisdom behind

Those spooky black eyes

And those long drooping ears

There's an animal wisdom

In the face of a dog

Who knows of the value

Of the moment called now

To live in this moment

Without fear or remembrance

To know the full joy

Of a sniff or a scent

Do live full alive

While running a squirrel

While digging a hole

Or rolling in grass

It is the same wisdom

That all animal bear

And all of he dogs

That have lived before

Of Argus and Balto

Of lassie and Bobbie,

And millions and millions

Of soft padded feet.

I Love You

I love you

Not for how I feel when I am with you
But for who you are when I am not there

I love you
Not for who you want to be
But for who you already are

I love you,
Because you were made to be loved
As I was made to love

I love you
Because I revolve around you
Like a planet round a star

Constant one
Of my attention
I would circle you forever
In an orbit of your star.

Superman

Superman stood on the highest building
In Metropolis, and looked down            Like God
Upon the ink-lined streets of his comic book world
and listened with his super hearing
For the cries of help below

Two million voices calling
come down, come down
Like a great red streak
out of blue sky
And save us

But he was not God
And even he has limits
And even he was infinitesimal
In the unfettered emptiness of space

In the shining spiral seas of light
A vision only he had seen
He among all the citizens of earth
Before the vast unending sea of dark
Even he stood silent and alone

And so paralyzed with indecision
He listened to them all                like God
And tried to decide which one to save
Because underneath his cape
He was just a mild-mannered reporter.

zoo tiger

I do not like to comb my hair


Because I like to start the day

With some part of me untamed



I do not like to button my shirt

Or take a bath if I do not need it

Because I like to know

That I still have a scent



In this unscented place

In this smooth and toothless place

Eyes imprisoned by my glasses

I see the world corrected and refined



Like the tiger at the zoo

Who does not pace any more

Who sits with face on paws

Staring out at passing world



He sits and stares and sits some more

But behind those bars we always know

There sits a tiger

rhymes with orange

I'll never find a word that rhymes with orange


Even if I search and search with more range

Through cold climates that would make Al Gore change

Even if failure would give my labrador mange

And Can it Be?

And can it be


That you really love me?



Can this be true

Even if I don't love you?



Though I may hide

Do you still want inside?



Will you still converse

Even when I am terse?



And can it be

That you really do love me?

Touring with Google Earth

here's an isle in the Atlantic


In a place called Terciera,

Where the forest oozes green

Through the early morning mist



Where the trees are playful giants

Running to the frozen breakers

And the sunset is forever

On the ever frozen sea



In this photographic instant

Stands a woman tall and slender

Leaning on a wooden railing

Leaning graceful as the sun



In her faded yellow T-shirt

and her cutoff denim shorts

She holds a her winking camera

Taking pictures of the land



She is going to take a picture.

And she will always stand there

In the mist of that one morning

Till the end of time itself



In the kingdom of he camera

Nothing ever disappears

Nothing is so very distant

And the lens remembers all.

Sun Dog

I know rainbows do not exist

Except as a property of light

I know that what I am seeing

Does not exists, and that

A mile away no one can see it

But just so it was

With shepherds on a hillside

And the multitude of heavenly host

That God reveals Himself

In quiet and unexpected ways

So I cannot but believe

That this phantom of light

Hanging above the world

Like a Christmas angel

Bears glad tidings of great joy

And that God is giving

His thumbs up to the world.