the call away

A cold wind flows over the cornfields;

Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.

I want to be out of here, go out,

Outdoors, anywhere in wind.

My back against a shed wall, I settle

Down where no one can find me.

I stare out at the box-elder leaves

Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,

Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.

This is what I want to do: to sit here,

To take no part, to be called away by wind.

I want to go the new way, build a shack

With one door, sit against the door frame.

After twenty years, you will see on my face

The same expression you see in the grass.

~ Robert Bly 

from Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life

art by van gogh

a single tree

Not so much time itself

as the changes, 

the constant shifting 

and metamorphosing

of things into 

their opposites,

or, more likely, diminished versions

of themselves.

The cat, grown old,

stumbles about the room,

and doesn't remember the year

she leapt from sill to sill

taking the lace curtains

down as she went.

And the tree,

a blackened scar,

opening its side to weather

minus its most stately branch,

long since taken off

by wind, or lightning,

or something obsessed

with symmetry --

does it recall the winter it stood

alone, unyielding,

against the hammering gale?

Or its abundant leafiness in spring,

its green proclamation

of all that continues

unabated in this world.

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

The mountains stood in haze

The mountains stood in haze,

The valleys stopped below,

And went or waited as they liked

The river and the sky.

At leisure was the sun.

His interests of fire

A little from remark withdrawn.

The twilight spoke the spire.

So soft upon the scene

The act of evening fell

We felt how neighborly a thing

Was the invisible.

~ Emily Dickinson