12/30/10: Upon Waking to a Phone Call From My Mother, and Looking Outside

Snow no longer covers our walk way.
What's left on the ground is now mostly gray.
The trees once again bare their black branches,
The streets, their bald black asphalt.
Three people died in the storm.
Things come and things go
just as they do;
It is not fate,
It simply is.

12/27/10: 3rd Avenue, First Blizzard of Winter

We walk in sidewalk canyons single file,
heads down, hats pulled low,
eyes squinted against the snow.

The salt men
powder sidewalks.
The plows build
roadside mountains.
Bus tire chains
grind into the asphalt.

It's 22 degrees out,
they say it feels like 4.
By Saturday, they say,
it should be 'bout 51.

12/23/10: Union Square

Suddenly, white sky
opens snow on Union Square;
everyone looks up.

12/24/10: W. 4th Street Station, C train platform

On cold subway platform, I
watch the catharsis
of hot wheel on rail,
& the nature of sparks.

When things move to-
gether, something is
born.

12/20/10: Greenwich Village

Walking down Bleecker,
walking Cornelia
Warming cold hands in a
West Village laundromat
Man with black Shepherd says of
passing blue minivan--
"There's the F.B.I. again,
just keeping watch"
Young couples strolling in
soft entre nous
Men stacking ladders on
white plumber's truck
B.M.W. motorbike--
sidewalk obstruction
Black stacks of garbage bags
Christmas light fire escapes

Well lit apartment windows make
good T.V.s,
for the bored and the homeless.

12/24/10: E 88th St.

Three shining doves
punctuate the Winter sky
as if, an ellipsis...

12/24/10: 1st Ave. near 84th

Quiet Friday
I pause by a wall
to lean
to write
to witness the now.

12/09/10: Rte. 9W, Southbound

Windy way
9W
black ice slick
mountain pass
All the way,
silver moon
hooked in hanging
velvet sky.

12/17/10: 10:34 PM, Uptown C Train

Penn Station through the
Acid etched graffiti glass:
"A clean, well lit place".

12/17/10: Central Park West

Beyond night blacked trees
a golden lit building top;
It's the harvest moon!

A Ponderation

I wish that I knew
how much further away
from the Sun we really are
in December, than July,
so I could simply marvel
at how much difference is made, by
three inches, or twelve thousand miles
(which isn't really all that much,
when you think in cosmological scale)
in how it all feels to us,
standing here, on Third Avenue.

12/16/10: 3rd Ave. @ 86th St.

City sidewalks and bus seats
Diner booths and subway steps
Are strewn with lost scarves
Orphaned gloves
Forgotten hats
The ubiquitous detritus
Of winter.

12/7/10: Kerhonkson

I am the nature of deer
grazing on grass
of grass
eating earth
of earth
eating deer

Soon enough
despite my hard soled shoes
my words and thoughts
and treasured things
In spite of my pride
and forgetfullness of the fact
that I am also mud
the earth will have
me too.

12/06/10: Kerhonkson

Waronawanka Mountain home
I drink
water from icicle branches
Breathe
air from frozen creek
The gray snowflake sky
is my bed
Under pine feather blanket
I sleep.

12/06/10: Kerhonkson

Tell the snow dusted grass
the creek nymphs
the well
Tell the old black stove
the split logs
the axe
Tell the pitch
Tell the road where it bends
Tell the tall pines
I'm home again.

12/03/10: Friday Morning, First Of Home

Sharp white
cold steel
water bucket breath
Bald black branches
in the
blue gray light

Listen to the
sidewalk--
the stoops &
hoods of cars
These things know
Soon,
snow.

Airplane

From above, it looks
as though the ground is foaming
white-- like shaken beer.

11/18/10: Miami: Parents' Backyard

Something small moves in
fallen palm fronds: rustling
leaves demand I look.

11/27/10: Miami: Parent's Living Room

Reflection of lamp
in night blackened window casts
no halo at all

This Is How You

This is how you
plant a tree
make a garden
dig a ditch

This is how you
make a wall
prune a bush
polish a boot

This is how you
change a fanbelt
build a sandcastle
learn Japanese

This is how you
do many things
This is how you
write a poem.