Early morning brought her
Sunlight off the water
Footlights for the forest
Highlighting every leaf

Hours pass before us
Quieting birdsong chorus
Stealing dew from flowers
My mid morning Grief

Nature finds a new design
Repeats it endlessly
Out of utter joy
Like a baby
With a new word

Why do birds exalt in song
At coming of the dawn?
Unlike us, they never know
If it will come again.

Three days
Can be a lifetime
So they say

Three days
To burst forth from the deep,
Find a mate and die

Three days from death ‘til resurrection
We live in different worlds
Still, the pond holds your reflection

Low clouds scurry overhead
Dividing heaven and earth
The living and the dead

Cool mourning mist
licked my cheeks
I hadn’t cried in weeks

Now a new era erupts
Measured out in coffee cups

Change, in my pocket
Already spent
Some unseen veil is rent

Sitting here in shade
Plans best laid  
Mice and men unmade

Deciding now which way they should go
To and fro

Hiding in this green protective world
Nature unfurled

Lining up dead limbs to mark the way
Nothing to say

Fallen tree blocks the old way through
As though he knew

Trimming trails no one will ever see
No one but me

Woods have sheltered me in tearful times
Hid beneath a Sugarberry bush
Keening, like the hawks high overhead
Accepting death in upturned turtle shells

Donkeys cross the dam
In somewhat single file
Meandering like a stream
Yet in one known direction

Their purpose made more serious
By their nonchalance
A dignity of being
Of knowing who they are

Backs toward the setting sun
Grazing green grass
Headed home, no hurry here
Though night is falling fast