The Bike Path

 

Every dead end in town

Bumps up against it,

In a clutter of sheds,

Old gravel, and dogs.

It must, I suppose,

Have been a railway embankment,

At least where it rises

Over the baseball field.

 

Farther on, bad land protects it –

A waste of scrub, a forbidding stretch of marsh –

And a single birch hovers

Over a lonely pond,

Where a bench is dedicated

To someone’s memory.

 

We call it the bike path,

But mostly we walk it,

Ambling between

Two sleepy twin towns,

And mumbling a greeting

When we pass each other –

A dim little signal

Between separate solitudes.

Miracles

 

Your private miracle

Is simply being conscious,

And no one does it 

Quite the way you do.

 

Eight billion people 

Carry similar secrets,

But each is complete,

And separate as a gem.

 

Trust that you are,

And that you have, enough 

That whatever filters

Through your prism self

 

Is worth the hearing,

And worth the knowing,

To some other lonely,

Diamondlike soul.

 

Hopeful Thinking

 

I know that I can love,

And I know that I can be loved,

And it is only a matter of time 

Before those two comets

Collide.

Firefly Winter

 

Every night I am watching

For the fireflies to wake up

Across the hollow and river
Where they winter along a bluff.

 

Every day I am waiting

For the dripping in the eaves,

The lengthening of twilight,

The greening of the leaves.

 

But as I watch and wait here,

The radiator purrs;

The owl hoots a warning;

The bobcat slyly stirs.

 

The waiting makes them sweeter –

Both the winter and the spring.

The one fills up with longing;

The other, with everything.

 

The Holy Night

 

There is nothing holy

About any particular night

Unless you fill it

With song and silence,

Old stories told again,

Foods long remembered,

Perhaps a warming drink,

And a few good companions,

Family or otherwise,

Who have come through the bad times,

And the good times, to be here now.

 

There is nothing sacred

But what is made sacred

By the diligent effort

Of imperfect men,

And nothing is saved

From the fire of the ages

Except the endless moment

In which we briefly live.

Why

 

Because after every disappointment,

Every heartache,

The world remains.

 

The world is innocent,

Vast as anything,

Utterly merciless,

Unfathomably good.

 

In it we find everything

We want or need;

In us it finds only meaning,

Its only meaning,

Its very heart.

 

We love and are loved,

But above all we are driven,

Drawn to the wheel

Where all labors are spent.

 

Stars wheel above us,

Too many to dream;

We toil beneath them,

Knowing nothing

But why.

Strasbourg

 

As I walk in the sun

Over the slow-flowing Rhine,

My mind is on things not said, not done;

People I’ve let down, who let me down -

The great, growing weight of neglected things.

 

Strasbourg itself is in no hurry.

It has been dreaming here for centuries -

Cathedral-crowned, canal-streaked, solid;

A place for major gods and minor kings.

 

One man is not large enough to breathe deeply.

Only a city can do it - late at night,

When no one is around,

Inhaling the sweat, the sadness, of millions,

The living and the dead,

Exhaling its own pure thoughts.