Squirrel Flats Band

Ambush

There was a faint suggestion
in the subtle soft array
as sunlight played upon the garden
bringing springtime.

snowmelt urged the fertile earth, 
the flying forth, the subtle burst, 
the mating dance beginning
its beginning.

treading softly in the garden,
i could sense a fresh vibration
as the greening stretched from slumber,
brave but wary.

nibbling down the wildlife path, 
a deer encroaching on the grass
implied improvements i had made 
were temporary.

now i sensed there was an ambush
in the tangle of the weeds,
where the vines and dandelions
were conspiring.

i glimpsed a snake awakening,
luxuriating, undulating,
gliding through the growth
that grew around me.

as I was lying in the grass
and later lying in the house,
i understood what winter's mask
had hidden:

my stubborn clinging to what was,
avoidance of the obvious;
an old but dear embattlement
required revision.

old designs were rearranged,
ancient architecture changed;
brambled weeds and reaching vines made
their advances,

and i hunkered down for summer,
feeling nature take her course
in my reduced but more familiar
circumstances.

Dance Away

Bright flowers that bloomed in the summer and fall
danced away, danced away, danced to the call
of the breezes that moved through the high ancient pines
and the needles blew down forming patterns and signs.

Leaves from the scrub oaks mingled en masse
with aspen-leaf teardrops that speckled the grass.
Abstractions of color embellished the grounds-
red leaves and gold leaves were raked into mounds.

And the millions of snowflakes came whirling around,
landing on rooftops not making a sound,
and glowed in the moonlight in pillow and row
and billions of snowflakes made mountains of snow.

Bare branches now brittle; the air has turned cold
and we long for the days when the sun will grow bold,
and the ground will be soft and the springtime will yawn,
and the flowers will dance once again on the lawn.

Monsoon Concerto

Mvt.1
In late July the breathless breeze
arouses pine and aspen trees.
Woodwind songs and harpers' strings
play weather-driven harmonies.
The world glows in a filtered haze,
initiating shorter days.
I translate breathy chant and word
from languages I've never heard;
now come the sounds of flute and oboe
played by spirits of the wood-
composing a concerto.

Mvt.2
The valley glows in heat of day
as sun and shadow alternate,
revealing, extinguishing,
the fragile landscape time has made.
Clouds drift then chase in swift parade
as patterned raindrops strike
in patterned raindrops strike
in a percussive sharp staccato.
Tympanic beats of thunder moan,
then boom across the coal-grey dome.
Rhythmic rain dissolves and fades,
as thunder softens, falters, slows; now pian piano

Mvt.3
In damp and mist, sunlight reveals
and arch against a sky of steel.
The rainbow's luminescent light
glimmers, glows, then fades from sight
splashing a painterly array
of sunset's brush and colorplay.
Silence rules until the dawn,
then wakes the world with light and song.
And soon, in incandescent glow,
a new song will compose itself,
di nuovo e di nuovo.

Erosion

The bones of the world
are sculpted in stone:
an arch, a wormhole,
profile of a woman facing a man,
immobilized through time.

A canvas awaits pigment-
crushed minerals of the land.
The sugar sand
and the purple rocks,
the layered sandstone
of the ancient cliffs
mark the part of eternity
we can fathom.

Now clouds and their shadows transform the land.
What is more real-
the mirage or the sand?

Desert Landscape 1.0

I look up at the slanting mesa rise
before the vivid blue-bright cobalt skies.

A pale blend of greens and beige and white
in washed-out contrast, brilliant blinding light.
Monsoons of summer fade to droughts of fall
and I have luck to gaze upon it all.

The spiking grasses in a broad expanse,
the antelope and ravens in their dance;
I find my composition ready-made-
I wait until the coming of the shade.

Now shadows from the clouds progress in waves
across the parapets that stand like graves,
carved by wind in canyons brown and pink-
my life in geologic time, a blink.

I take a moment down a pebble slide
finding where the angles coincide.
I set the easel, colors in my hand,
and paint with pigment made from desert sand.

Desert Landscape 2.0

I look up
at the slanting mesa
rise under a blue-bright dome-
a pale blend of
green-beige-white,
in washed-out contrast,
blinding light.

Monsoons of summer
quickly fade and presage early
droughts of fall.
It is mine
in this
small time;
I gaze upon it all.

Harsh razor grasses, desert sage,
punctuate the broad expanse
and frame a stage upon which dance
ravens in their arcing flight;
a composition shows itself.
I wait.       I wait.

Revealing shapes in stark relief,
shadows under clouds progress
in waves across the parapets 
that stand like graves
in light and shade
in timeless time.

I scramble
down
a pebbled slide
and analyze the scene ahead,
evaluating how and where
lines and angles
coincide.

Above the canyons
carved by seas
and scoured by sand
in endless winds,
morphing purple indigoes
glide across pink castle walls,
then race across the desert floor.

The palette balanced in my hand,
I paint with pigment
made from sand.
In geologic time I am
a blink a wink and nothing more.

Ozymandias in Colorado

In this, a land of summits carved by ice and scoured by cold,
of wilderness and vistas that remain unchanged and whole,
of pines deep green, white aspen trees, and star-swept skies aglow;
some took for granted as their birthright all that was bestowed.
Where dusty mountain roads in spirals coil, 
revealing visions through the peaks that reach toward heaven's dome,
step with respect: this may not be forever ours to hold.

Shacks of mangled weathered boards remain where men extracted gold,
marking where the miners slaved, exploited for their harshest toil.
Men were paid to kill and maim, by those who longed for wealth untold,
while some committed genocide so robbers could build railroads.
The native-born the settlers found believed the earth could not be owned
and untamed earth, surveyed, re-named, was stripped of its elusive soul.
Then land disguised as real estate was sold and sold and then re-sold.

Awkward mansions sprawl and pose upon uplifted rocky folds,
defacing cliffs and valleys green where sun-sparked rivers race and flow.
Mountain towns are overrun in seasons when the tourists roam;
ATVs crash through the woods, disturbing wildlife, leaking oil,
and interruptions dot the ridge lines where tract houses stand like clones.
In lands where natives dwelled, in lands we stole, 
among the boulders etched by time, grieving spirits sigh and moan.

"Development" made strange the lands indigenous no longer knew;
natives who revered the earth were told their way of life was doomed.
Broken-hearted, forced to march through valleys where they once had thrived,
they were removed to lands so brutal, still they struggle to survive.
Now Paradise is Holocaust, her forests burn in violent throe;
it seems to be our destiny to die of self-inflicted woe,
as those in power fail to see that arrogance is all they know.

Hopelessly, we search for balms for climate and catastrophe;
how are we to heal a world our grandchildren won't live to see?
As glaciers shrink and disappear and islands drown before our eyes,
as whales cry and dolphins sigh and birds fall from the browning skies,
as sterile fish and mutant frogs join in extinction's dance,
iniquity and greed conspire, supplanting tribal prayers and chants.
In all haste, and desperately, too late we search for remedy.

Perhaps one day the fools and thieves will pass away unknown,
still believing myths and lies they themselves have honed,
and with them take the rest of us who've tried to educate and warn,
and all of us will be cast out of Paradise where we were born.
We manifested "destiny," claimed what we found, and slammed the door.
Why didn't we collaborate and honor those who came before?
Perhaps this "tribe" that rules the globe will one day see the world implode.

Confusing "progress" with mistakes, we've sacrificed our sacred home.
Humanity will not survive a folly that seems set in stone.
Is it our fate to disappear, destroying what we stand upon,
caught in raging currents, pressed toward lemming-like oblivion?
There may be time to change our ways; in honesty, we cannot say.
If preaching helps, then let us preach; if prayer would help, then let us pray
we'll one day find a different path, divorced from suicide's ballet.

Redwinged Blackbirds

Red wings flash in perfect flight,
until the time each will alight.
Quite politely perched on posts
or on the tops of tall marsh grass-
exactly where to land, they know.
Expertly they space just so,
and I have never seen them fight.
Would that we were half as bright.

Rorschack Moths

Graphic moths, wings outspanned,
penciled lines on papery white,
rest on sun-bleached daisies.
Then in pairs, they back up
so their lines align, each to each.
In sensual geometries,
two triangles make a diamond,
four lines, a square-
pulsing then spent, in end-to-end pairs,
they rest in patterns black and bright.

In perfect camouflage they lie,
then separate, each mate from mate.
They seem to sense the proper time
when they should part on errant ways.
They fly apart, each heart from heart,
abandoning this lusty match
to find some other mothy friend
and then begin
again again
their shapely sensual displays.

Falling

A sudden change of atmosphere,
frosty grey and altered mood;
darkened rooms, secret dread
of still-born life and loneliness.
Stirring breezes chilled with autumn's 
numbness fill the leaden air.
No birds are heard;
their music quelled.
I search within-
there's nothing there.

They sky can offer no relief;
blue is just a memory
of brighter times and warmer ways,
forgotten joys, golden days.
Dry leaves cling to fantasy
of evergreen eternal life
as in the wind they're tossed and teased
and lose their fragile hold and fly
across the air into the sky
to settle on the earth and die.

Why Talk at All?

Reaching at nothingness, nothing responds to us;
spiritless wanderlust, we've lost our way.
Words emerge pointless, empty and meaningless;
why talk at all when there's nothing to say?

Friends whom we thought we knew no longer know what's true-
some don't know right from wrong, or so it seems.
Falling down rabbits holes, fighting off vicious trolls,
brainwashed by othering, falling for schemes.

Amazed at the maze we've made, we cannot find our way.
Thought is enslaved, hobbled by fear.
Birth begets seeds of death, life dreads its final breath;
All things race to their end, then disappear.

Lost in strange energies, tossed by a frigid breeze;
our conversations no longer take flight.
Hope is a meteor dashed on the desert floor;
Now there is darkness where once there was light.

Searching, we do not find; seeking we fail to see,
whitewashing histories, neutered and tamed.
Confused and befuddled by twisted realities,
we lack the courage to turn the next page.

Amazed by the maze we've made, we cannot find our way.
Thought is ensnared, friends live in fear:
Hopeless and lost at sea, drowning in misery,
The old ways dissolve, blurred by our tears.

The present has been replaced, our history may be erased;
dreams built on shifting sand, may disappear.
Birth begets seeds of death, life dreads its final breath;
May there come a time when we find a new way.

Consigned to stupidity, dulled by hypocrisy,
false religiosity, corruption and greed.
Is there something we can save? Can hope make a brighter day?
We'll work it out when there's something to say.

Colorado Blizzard

Fluffy clusters lie high in the pines,
pile on rooftops, lazy, supine,
draped and sinuous on fences and gates,
masking the car as its windows glaze.
Under the roof of the covered porch,
I watch flakes land in drifts and stands-
powdering my face and hands.

Granules fly in freezing strands,
in waves of streaming frozen bands
slumping into impromptu sculpture,
transforming woodpiles into sleeping elephants,
making lilac bushes shapeless mounds,
a world powdered and packed,
a magician's act

that makes the whole world disappear.
Branches arc under the mass,
trunks withstand an Arctic blast
of diamond shards and shattered glass.
Ponderous roofs on old barns creak;
blinding winding trails, bleak,
soon indecipherable.

Across the drive, the white creek bank
is all a blank, a wind-swept blur
with prickly spikes of frozen grass,
as if some frozen porcupine 
poked its quills
among snow-topped cattails
and tangled willow branch.

Deer have hidden, silent, still,
nuzzled close in a favorite nest.
Swirls of snowflakes now conceal
the spikes of grass and the frozen creek.
Obscured and vague, the white trees reach and
the branches stretch in an endless blend of limb and sky,
now lost in the whining blizzard's shriek.

I gaze into the tempest's haze
as winter's fury predictably plays.
I've transfixed for who-knows-how-long
and find I'm nearly frozen in place.
I pull a blanket all around and leave the frenzy of the storm
to go inside where it is warm,
anticipating softer days.