This Place, At Times

(C) R.L.K.

Dawn. In the garden,
the sunlight flings dew over
the young marigolds.
....

Afternoon shadows
struggle through garden walls, fall
across the roses.
....

All night long, the sound
of the rain softly falling
into the garden.

Some Sabbath

(C) R.L.K.

Sunday -
    after hard
      rain,
       sunlight
through the windows, trees
    glisten / between leaves,
        pieces
        of blue sky

....
   such warmth
      finally,
a summer day so boldly
     green,    awash
        with sun-
         shine, fine
    with light breezes
      through a window
open        to what's
                new    
....

dusky light
    lingering
  on the hilltops;

softly now,
    the rustling of
breeze-shaken leaves /

   along the shaded
     sidewalk,
       sounds
     of another day
       done

Quintet

(C) R.L.K.

as the morning bells ring
  mist from the river
    veils the birch trees
.

the sun lights up the room
  while the dust rag glides
    across the piano top
.

late in the afternoon
  a pair of sparrows
    pose on a telephone pole
.

at close of day
  the air shimmers
    just before the rain
.

all through the night
  the cottonwoods whisper
    while the rain slowly falls

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