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Coming Home

Holidays with friends and family three hundred miles from our home. Strange beds, familiar faces, Heading home in the rain on that same stretch of I-90 upstate and over. All day rain. Every farmers field is full of fog drifting over snow melting into tan straw and brown mud.

starbucks doubleshot
old blues on the radio
stoned on truck spray

There's no getting home any quicker than normal. It always ends the same, Eighty, untill you get behind the one truck passing the other at 71. It all averages out to four and a half hours door-to-door. Our brain always tries to make a change, alter the facts, influence the outcome. Still, rain falls down, not up. We come in right on time.

rain drapes the house
in the same gray as the road
dog in the window

Christmas Gift

The day after Christmas the Crecent Trail is a sheet of ice. Like I imagine the old trails to the mountian temples in ancient Japan. Narrow, muddy on the sides and ice running down the middle. I have a walking stick to help me balance which grips the mud with a thwuck!

snow filters
through the black skinned branches
muddy paw prints

Rounding the curve I meet two women coming down from the top of the hill. With them is a british spaniel, mottled liver and white. No leash on the dog so I decide to make friends. "Nice puppy". This seems to be more invitation than the dog can stand. He rushes me.

blue jeans
and hiking boots
both with their own mud

in the gray light
seeping in through the window
gutter rain trickle
is the only morning sound
turning to quiet snowfall

the hard wood floor
is cold in the the morning
wet with cat puke

Happy Christmas

roof gutter dripping
snow melt christmas morning
three kids in our bed

First Thaw

snow melt
fills the black pool cover
and trapped leaves

Glacial Memory

In 1999 I spent a month in Tibet.

tibetan glacier
in the august afternoon
trickles on boots

Glaciers

I have been reading Gretel Ehrlichs "The Future Of Ice" which has gotten me doing online learing about ice. I found All About Glaciers to be a great intro to the science of glaciers. Very informative and light.

Sea Ice

Sea Ice, unlike lake ice or river ice is salty, unlike glaciers it forms at sea. This unique ice and the way it forms affects our ecosystems and the way we survive. All About Sea-ice is a great site to learn about this phenomena and it's iimportance to us.

The Work Of Ice

The Work Of Ice

hills surround these lakes
carved
pushed up
dropped
by glacial scrape

lake and hill
the work of ice
with its own slow tides
stacking debris (moraines)
so high
streams change their direction
flow north
to the great trough
ontario

ice      like mind
can turn on you
shift
seeks always flux

can snap without warning
a raw crack
pealing thunder echoes

first crust collects at the edges
of the gutter or crag
the surface
slick on the frozen core
expands out
extends down
memory
dripping
in free fall