in these mountains, winter tends to linger, teasing us with spring followed by a new layer of snow…
winter’s end
each snow covered branch
is like a phrase in the erratic final chapter
of winter, punctuated
by small dark birds, confused
by the storyline of the season.
while overhead, three geese
skim the treetops, crying out,
lost in this featureless white world,
desperately searching, like so many of us,
for a safe place to land
© 2019 jafink/oldbonesnewsnow.com
we recently lost a friend to cancer, a death that prompted a number of close-to-the-bone poems for me. some so close that I don’t feel like I can share them without causing pain to her family. perhaps this, about a dinner we shared with her husband along the way, might touch on it without going too far…
he should get out some, she said, but how?
out of what? into what? knowing as we do
that her disease
is consuming their lives together.
that she’s at home slowly dying
while we sit here, sharing a meal.
we spend the evening speaking of birds
of the intelligence of crows.
of how she would watch the eagles
over the lake hunting the ducks.
of how she always sided with the ducks
though they rarely survived the attack.
of how birdsong at morning
differs profoundly from the songs of evening.
of how darkness seems to swoop down
and swallow the final notes.
of how in the deepest dark of night
countless birds are said to pass overhead
through the highest of heavens,
following the ancient ways north, and then south
and then north again. of how this migration
of souls passes completely unseen.
of how, in the end, there is so very much
that each of us must ultimately take on faith.
© 2018 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com
wild is small sharp sounds
rising through black, bare-limbed trees
wild is the weak
slant-light of morning
wild is uninvited, intrusive
discordant
wild is sudden
wild is imperative, urgent
wild is now and now
and now again
wild is a restlessness
a knowing
a coming together
wild is long fluid lines
spilling across an azure sky
wild is ragged and unstable
wild is perpetually adapting
wild is a fathomless
round eye
wild is feathers and fat,
muscle and hollow bones
wild is the cry of the straggler
desperate to catch up
wild is the cold hard fate
of those left behind
wild is thousands of wings
wild is the flock rising as one
over stubbled fields
wild is the wind
wild is the coming storm
wild is the snow
falling now in silence
to sanctify this precious
darkening world
© 2016 jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com
I was walking in a bookstore when the phrase, “we always believed that she could fly” came into my mind, loudly. That night, a poem arose. The details are from my mother’s memorial….
detail of weathered tombstone, barnett, VT
chilidish things
we stood in a circle about the grave
some read poems and some
chose silence. the funeral director
placed her ashes into the hole
while redwing blackbirds sang
in the fields. we always assumed
that she could fly, but then we
were only children, eager to cling
to childish things
©jafink/oldbones.newsnow.com
Two untitled pieces from a spring afternoon in the mountains
(after dogen…)
one day while out
walking, the mountain may turn
and hand you your heart –
here
this is your heart, don’t lose it
near here lies the road
home
a cloudless blue sky holding the mountain
countless
winged fairies
from the cottonwoods
dancing, swirling, the profound
wealth
of immeasurable
blossoms on the old crab apple
all the small birds have returned
bringing a smooth
southerly breeze, well being
beyond words
homeless in america
we imagine we were born
here. if home is where the heart is
then why are we so anxious
to leave? why can we see it only
once we’ve gone? it’s not about walls
and floors, windows and things. america
is a place of coming to, not from, the land
of the rootless. we roll across this landscape
like dunes stepping along a shore. we
are the forgetting ones, the ones who’ve left
are leaving, will leave- homelessness
the scourge of our age; even the cleanest
among us sleeps under a bridge
of his own imagining.
we are late to this land
if you’re white, you’re not from here
where did you come from, where
will you go? so little time to build anything
of consequence. the land is indifferent
the land can wait us out
the lakes in this valley are shallow and wide
like the valley itself. the swans come here to nest
blowing primordial trumpets. in the fall
the ragged V’s of their white bodies press hard
into high white clouds, their trumpets echoing
across the valley. the young birds need to fly
after months of rest, to rebuild their strength.
the birds remember. soon, they will rise as one
body, will rise white against white clouds
will rise up and over the white snows
of the passes, and be gone. somehow
they have always known precisely
where they belong. and for this
we must surely envy them
©J.A. Fink/Oldbonesnewsnow.com 2013