New Year

i. rain song

Hear and smell and feel the cold December rains come hard and joyful
their sharp fingers slash to racing
little rivers until they pour fast and freely
over roads made waterways---
and things are happening out here.
In the lulls, redwoods gasp mist like dragons

and little creeks bloom everywhere,
water bubbling from the earth, the rocks,
from rivulets and channels under mulching duff.

Fungus are waiting. Unseen mycelia bulge with readiness.
Their first crop melted with the rain
but that clear morning after-storm will see
this world made thick with them.
Salamanders pulse tenderly beneath every other upturned stone
breathing moistly through their skins.

Things are happening, things are happening, they all whisper
that which does not kill us, adds to us
that which kills us, adds to us.


ii. parrot

I am pedaling my trainer and grazing the internet,
trying to force my legs to speed. I glance back;
a small parrot bathes splashingly a few feet away
in the square glass bowl I use otherwise to store
leftover vegetables.
(come on legs, you can do it; Pedal)
I may keep parrots partly to remind myself
that if one is careless,
the most exquisite beauties can become commonplace.
And of the price, should I fail
to notice beaded water reflecting emerald
to meet that wild, dark alien eye
and see no stories.


iii. rain song again

slashes down singing
the sweet musical sheets of rain on my face
and the moment I realized
that love ran deeper than its sorrow after all,
that all of it was going to be fine,
and my thirsty skin was welcoming her touch like rain.


iv. parrot again

He drops a pellet in his water
and cheerfully lathers his ragged feathers with the mush.
I change his water dish again.
Whatever diverse human impulse
brings us to keep such creatures close at hand,
all result in increased humility.


v. dogs

The dogs are a continuum. I have now lived
several lifetimes,
the eras of my time marked by each of theirs.
Here arranged my current pack before the fire:
old Jez drowsing wolfishly upon her cushion,
a tall young collie gazing at the flames, flanked
by two matching, sleeping cats;
a sheltie here and there.
These and the ghosts of all the others,
who I can almost see in the corner of my eye,
for whom I still call thoughtlessly sometimes.

My pack accretes like time, like all the past
like love, becoming denser with the years;
still rising with light hope and longing
to soak up torrents with its everything
to welcome a new, misty dawn.