In the year of fire and fear when even the air has stopped breathing I have come to see the woods again to kneel beneath her waters, joined where the main creek and her sister join here there is dark spruce, tangled willow, darting minnow, and refuge again to ask all the questions but the wild ones say what they have always said sweep of wind rippling water clatter of rockfall silent deadfall osprey wing on water

I think we love any cord that binds us to family. From Night Orchard She drove an old Buick, down every dirt road in central Florida, and never once did she wash it. Each year was added a coat of the fine black dust that blows on the wind from…

… “know that this day this sweet golden day this bright manly day (what we do with our days) is like the clear river ?” From Sheep Mountain, revisited There’s a light in the western mountains that comes at the end of the day. After the heat of the late…

We have come to the Whitney our pasts inside us, silent like the dogwood flower A tableau of sculptures march the veranda, some small and assertive, some large and lethargic all migrants, ex-captives the clank of their chains still shuffles the High Line one foot fear, one foot courage one step fear, one step courage they join in assembly they tell of their bondage One figure, an ape of a figure big African lips, on his shoulder a bindle not of clothes or belongings but of empty food cans

We bought the old place for it’s reach to the woods and it’s true… a step from the door and on to the trail that winds through the waiting aspen is to enter the place where the boundary awaits where the rusted sign says “please latch the gate” … and to hear the land speak of unfinished days. There’s a corner-tree there back deep in the woods a spruce, near eight feet around, and girded by strands of forgotten barbed wire.

If all of the metal were melted down in this foothills town all the rails with their whispers of longed-for arrivals all the nails holding our bones upright all the girder and truss and our hard love for safety all our fence, all our fears standing sentry at night The blood moon arises the seeing stars know the sleeping town murmurs of snow —

There’s a band of thin light at the curve of the world reaching into the forest, flowing over the sage rising with the still blue morning, bringing the day’s portion of earthly grace. You may lie here for only a moment, rest only as long, to be living again. You can get there only by running, you may only arrive empty handed. __

At first, I had trouble with freedom. My eyes kept returning to the same nighttime window my ears to the same worn assertions. This morning, the wild elk are singing the sagebrush is turning the willow are burning the snow geese are gathered their flight down the river. -—

There’s a town nearby I’ve loved my whole life. It sits by the river, the only choice for a western town, in a valley of sagebrush and piñon and too little rain. There are high mountains to the west, so beautiful in the morning light, so imperious and purple. …