Personal Tectonics

No handholds or footholds
on this wall of today

slippery smooth as limestone
missing familiar patterns

granite edges all dissolved
uncertain of right bearings

something seismic happened
beyond butterfly perturbations

nothing yet revealed
to my agitated force field

personal landscape shifting
hoping for no pole reversal.

Nature's Witness

How will it feel…when
common robins are no more

gray squirrels cease to scamper
as high-wire acrobats

no birdsong reverberates
with dawn’s awakening light

butterflies fail to reappear
without flowers in the spring

the hum of buggy multitudes
is absent from summer air

bluebirds flee over the rainbow
eagles exit through narrowed skies

kangaroos slip past gravity
elephants, tigers close behind

the sun does not rise everyday
seas and oceans lose their tides

landscapes drenched in daily gray
relinquish all disguise

not taking nature for granted
how will it feel without.

North Woods Memory Bank

Beached canoe on lakeshore edge
missing its tousled little lass

two babies lay in those bulrushes
near McDonald’s mid-stream rocks

swallowtails, checkerspots loop by
captured once with childhood hands

rambunctious wildflower bunches
offerings of a small boy’s love

big-rock play springs to life
with hide-and-seek theater

campfire moments toasted well
in magic light of shooting stars

I touch initialed crayon marks
cabin ghosts of growing children

the present resides now in the past
with long dimensions of remembrance.