Suppose a person entering a house
were to feel heat on the porch,
and going further,
were to feel the heat increasing,
the more they penetrated within.
 
Doubtless, such a person would believe
there was a fire in the house,
even though they did not see the fire
that must be causing all this heat.
 
A similar thing will happen
to anyone who considers
this world in detail:
one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees
of beauty and excellence,
and that the nearer they are to God,
the more beautiful and better they are.  [i] 
 
“Sermon on the Apostles' Creed, 13-14”
Thomas Aquinas   (died 1274)
 
 
[i]   “Thomas Aquinas”.  en.wikiquote.org.  {https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas}  (accessed December 1, 2021). 

 
Like Ulysses when the surging
from the hostile cliffs rebounding
on the jagged rocks returning,
like him with his fingers clinging,
to the black rock, straining, clinging,
waiting for the wave to crush him
fearing other rocks behind him
holding with his fingers
till the skin was torn and raw,
like Ulysses’ hands in danger
tearing half the skin upon them
till the gentler current carried
tired swimmer toward peaceful shore,
like Ulysses, love is holding,
holding till life offers more.
 
                                                                        (1960s) 

 
When last winter’s grass
leaning bent in tangles
loosens ice to tiny streams
between new roots and black earth sparkling
its faded ghost
feels on withering skin
the sun’s cold warning:
never green again

 
Oh, in some
immortal book
to be the word
which eases pain
 
to be the echo
or the voice
of lover’s loss
or spring’s new choice
 
as with some poems
whose words forgot
with ghostlike calls
entice my brain
until I go to look them up
and read their breathing words again!
 
                                                                        (1960s)

 
I forgot to watch for April
because I wanted  May.
As soon as March was over
I set my mind to play.
I waited for the flowers,
the balmy perfumed air,
for sleeping in the grasses,
and sunlight in my hair.
 
But April came in gloomy
with overclouded skies,
freezing crocus petals;
the grass was undersize.
And April kept on lasting
without a hint of spring –
You could have called it March,
for me, and not have changed a thing.
 
 Till something started asking,
Why wish the days away?
If you can’t feel the April,
You’ll never touch the May
You’ll never savor sunlight,
or bend the playful breeze
You’ll never smell the air
or see the new green trees.
 
Unless there is an April,
how can there be a May?
 
                                                                        (1960s)

 
Beside the softly molded snow,
the river runs and rushes, black
and glinting with colorless moonlight –
braid-like strands,
curling and touching,
furling and blending,
little running, humming strands
warble and whisper and murmur.
Earth’s winter is a speechless maiden
braiding and braiding,
braiding her song-filled hair.
 
Earth’s summer is a naked sleeper,
breathing a regular cicada
with her head
tucked deep in pine-blue needles,
while the golden straw and the freckled petals
and the warm pink stone
soak in the shafted sun.
 
Nature mirrors woman,
but woman stands alone.
Woman’s Summer
is a spinster of forty,
who eats her breakfast
in the sun outside her cottage.
She looks at yesterday’s newspaper
and her varicose veins –
without poetry.
In her front-lawn meadow
cows are grazing,
and a forty year old tear clouds her eye :
the farmer down the lane there
will marry a girl from Pennsylvania.                              
 
Yellow leaves fall in Fall,
leaf upon leaf,
piles upon piles,
browning, drying
in layer upon layer,
in the bookshelves of her cottage.
These pages contain secrets,
says the new owner of the cottage,
so we’ll burn these leaves today
and keep the secrets stored away.
 
 Now who knows –
which heart’s sap was shrinking,
the forty year old heart,
which pushed the blood which pushed the pen,
or the dying hope
whose yellow signals asked for Spring again?
 
This woman’s Winter came in earth’s summer.
The river pool was still,
the minnows brown, and the sand
a deep, deep gold.
Her weight fell
and her heart stopped
– and no one knows which came first,
the stopping or the falling.
Two days later,
two spring-like boys,
exploring summer for its blue berries,
found her winter-cold body
in the summer-warm pool. 
 
                                      (for Marion. F., died 1950s)
 

 
Poor child
they found you in the river
when dredging for a man.
You were wrapped in trash bags,
umbilical attached.
Did you die a natural death
when birthing?
 
Or did she kill you,
the woman they now search for,
once pregnant,
now empty?
I pray also
for such a mother.
 
                                    (Pennsylvania newspaper article, 1990s) 

 
Come my children from near and far
hear the rag-clothed singer tell
the wondrous story of your birth
sit by the hearth of this nearest star
with your backs to the darkness
beyond the earth
hear the story by your fathers told
and the fathers of your fathers old
but never so clearly or so well
of who and what and why you are
 
                                                                        (1980s ?)