the morning was cleaning for yet another realtor visit...
when they come, I go into the lower yard
and sit on a swing bench and rock for comfort...
it's flanked by birch clumps I transplanted from the woods many years ago
I am surrounded...
if customers come... I am here, by the birches...
today..... I had an umbrella, to protect the book
I brought along... a small book of poems, for solace,
from my friend John,
I've read it many times...
when I moved here I believed in many things,
including that I would die here some day,
long into the future...
that too, seems an illusion now....
but as I opened the book
I remembered this poem by Robert W. King,
from "In The Empty Mountains"....
thanks again Robert...
First Afternoon In The Forest
There's a pine needle in my wine
and I'm delighted to say it
out loud, even alone. Feeling
an unknown in the warm cave
of my mouth, I pick it out
to announce this joy. I'm able
to drink wine, able to sit under a pine.
I will live here for years, drinking
dust in my wine, light rain in my wine,
and if I die outside, the glass
by my side, more dust will fall and fill,
more needles, pollen, a jay's blue feather,
yellow leaves will fall, and snow,
then summer, sunlight drifting down,
lichen erupting at the lip,
moss spreading it's little flowers
and finally the glass will be
like the rough hollow of a rock
as the body lying beside it,
broken and spilled, enters
the landscape, the world
filled up again with it's wine.
