Author Archives: John

The old trees have eyes
and gaping mouths
that try to speak
of what they’ve seen
before I came.

The granite grins
and looks inside my mind
to imagine everything
that has never been, yet.
The Red Tail follows

from oak to oak. Quail
run on invisible wheels
ahead of the tittering
of little birds scattering
the news as they go.

Without his shadow,
the coyote can’t see
his silhouette from the shade,
does not know that I can
act as obvious as he.

A doe and fawn freeze.
A bobcat lopes off
as I arrive. Everyone becomes
a messenger, even me,
packing salt to cows.

The dead and early leaves of Buckeyes cling
to great arms of flesh broken under low snows
look much the same in May as those rooted
in the earth, all shades of brown—yet severed.

Live Oaks on their sides like dominos collapsed
in the middle of a green thicket. Blue Oaks
stand like statues to disfigured soldiers after
war—all casualties of time—time will repair.

But a man steps lightly, carries a chain saw,
clears the way to mend his fences, rebuilds
surveyed lines through the downfall,
over rocks and rills you can’t feel on paper.

It is beyond us, always going on and on,
sometimes growing wilder in the process
when man’s dreams weaken with his flesh.
And therein the hope for new beginnings:

fresh spring starts and stems to learn again—
the great nature of things going on without
attention, without notice that still pumps
within us yet. We just don’t know it.

The phrase in my head,
the last line to the chorus
of an unwritten song—

my upbeat blank sheet
that needs to smile
at the truth, to be both

pleased and vulnerable, a
Bobby Bare song that applies
to loving and dying well—

when it’s all done,
there’s nothin’ more
to leavin’ than goodbye.

Perhaps her eyes go
early in the first verse
to search unfamiliar scenery,

then his retreat
to the wordless sounds
of rivers and streams—

one we can all sing
when there’s nothin’ more
to leavin’ than goodbye.