Memorial Night

(C) R.L.K.

So many poems about the rain have been written
in a place like this: a sparsely-lit, leaky depot
where someone is waiting, silently waiting
for the next train to arrive, not caring
where the train is bound, for it is the departing itself
that matters -- one lonesome old town is like
any other lonesome old town when the rain has become
the sound and the shade and the shape of the world.

May Morning: A Haiku

(C) R.L.K.

Thin streams of sunlight
on the floor, and the window
full of young green leaves.

When/Ever

(C) R.L.K.

We speak of time gone by: a windy summer
evening, perhaps, with the moon newly risen;
the clamor of leaves on the trees along the path
that led to the hills; and the shadows that stretched out
on those hills when we would pause a while to look
down on the distant town and think that the world
held so much space - space enough for us
and all our thoughts of time to come. As if
space and time and the world made out of them
were made for us. Not so: we speak now and say
they are made for nothing, they matter little, as the moonlight
that brightened the night mattered little, but oh,
was beautiful, is beautiful, to speak of, now.

At Maple Lake - Spring

(C) R.L.K.

Not anything I made, not these brief things,

but things I saw about the natural world:

I wish that these could hold there, never be gone.

- William Bronk

birdsong drifts downhill;
the maples show a gauzy
green haze of leaftips
while a silver mist shimmers
over the lake at sunrise

Stepping Out for Another Evening

(C) R.L.K.

Day's work done, day's
last light draining
into the street.
Now, you pause a
moment, silent
on the weathered
stair, and wonder:
what is it that
remains of so
much coming and
going? Just the
wind, the motion
of memories?
Just that then. Just.

About Here & About Now

(C) R.L.K.

Here is where the wind has been known
to blow wildly for days, even weeks,
bringing rain with it: hard, slanting rain
from a low gray sky. Here is also where we are,
or sometimes are, for a mind may be elsewhere,
thinking, imagining, picturing something there,
arriving through the form of possible facts
at the form of a world that is, really, possible.
_____

Now it is evening; it is warm
and windy, and you have crossed
a wilderness of distance, from street to street.
A soft, small rain is falling, slowly,
into shadows blandished by the lamplight.

It is not quite spring, of course,
but no longer winter. You are weary
of thoughts of the past, and not ready
to think of the future, simply moving,
quietly, in a world somewhere between.

Upon the Path

(C) R.L.K.

Time is an intrinsic and measurable medium only in the realm of matter; in the realm of consciousness time is only a principle of perspective. - George Santayana

1.
February dawn --
Perched on a lamppost a crow
Guards the empty street.

2.
After a cold rain,
Thin beams of sunlight stream down
Upon wet awnings.

3.
One more old poet
Walks across the drifted snow --
Where did the years go?