Cricket Space

There is a space
on the other side
of the lake;

a space where
a cricket can
crawl between
the rock and the
moss that is leaning

up against
the tree.

A space just
small enough
to hide
from the wind
and the rain that
drives itself
against

the calm.

I shall find

THAT space.

There I shall
hunker down
and listen
for the sound of
the growing roots

and the seeping
rain

and the
sound
of brittle leaves
blowing over
the rocks.

It is quiet there.
And calm;

did I say calm?

Ciao!

TJM+

High Rocks

The earth is
held together
up here with
cedar roots,
with hickory roots
and the constant hope
of no rain.

The red-shale soil
loves to wash
itself,
down
to the ravine below
becoming silt for the Tohickon Creek -
the Deer-bone Creek.

The dirt is
made up here
with the slipping
and the sliding of rock;
on rock;
stone against stone
and rain on earth.

The pounding and the force
makes dirt of the stone.

Creeping along in
the fingers of the rain
the dirt is grabbed,
the dirt is pushed
along the roots that cling
tightly to life
and to the vertical growth.

The earth is
held together up here,
by cedar roots,
by hickory roots,
and the constant hope
of no rain.

Stones and Moss I

I am captured by the stones.

The way they sit there -

piled and scattered -

in and out of relation

with each other.

The mosses can fold themselves,

if they like,

over the stones,

making mortar of themselves

for mounds of shifting rock.

They hold me, too.
I sit here,

among them,

and am unable to move;

sucking in the sun

and the rain

and the water

and listening to time pass with the moon -

Wondering how it all has

come together.

Have the rocks

and moss themselves

been arranged in such a pattern,
or do I, in my seeing, arrange them

in what appears to be a pattern –

even when scattered loosely

like debris. Do their forms exist in

any real way other than the way

I think I see them.