Trout

They move upstream
fins flailing

while a light rain falls
on the crunch of leaves
underfoot as we hurry
through woods and water

pausing to watch
the arc of gray
silver-flashing while airborne
then a flop into silence.

A Guess

In my dream water respires
on waves heaving and tumbling
down the gray-sheeted walls

to scatter foam
to find the shallows only guessed at.

Ailurophilia

If you want to write, keep cats.

- Aldous Huxley

Indian Summer

I will write down a few words
while the trees continue their murmur
and the skein from one spider
runs and shimmers in the light.

My Father

He left his country behind without much of a choice
and for thirty plus years from a new homeland
he hears of the new order
of the youth in jeans giddy with something
he would not call freedom.

Remembering Charlotte

At noon the church bells peal
their hymns into the trees
whose leaves are of a harvest softness.

This is a season when loss is remembered
in those who are still present
and your lope at once
quizzical
and knowing
(through and through Cat)
I now see with a pang.

Awakening

How is it that I have become
a morning person
who no longer waits for reveille and light
awakening instead to the pliant
to the dark that becomes day.

Waiting

After tea I wait
in flickering light
in the drone of what had been cicadas.

Two cats
and their cadence of grooming
lapsing into a brindled sleep

while I wait porous
for what was already there.