Moss growing on moss,
stitched like embroidery thread
to the fallen tree.

The moss draws the light,
sun finds it in the forest,
willing and able.

Their rough passages,
my automatic drawings
remind me of ships.

Lichen under moss
growing for thousands of years
here by the river.

The beautiful things
that happen every day,
most days we miss them.

Red-winged blackbirds sing
here at the heart of the world,
among the tall trees.

In my lost city,
I wanted to find beauty,
my life, just begun.

The dreams that I had,
setting off over the lake,
racing the sunset.

I move them around
to follow the sun all day,
the winter flowers.

Tender to tender—
we walked today in the cold,
now dreaming of it.

My disquiet mind,
drawn with fast, elegant lines,
tilted in my hands.

Am I enlightened,
I walk off into each night,
born new each morning.

The day we searched for
Lady’s slippers in the woods,
warmth rose with their heads.

The constellation
walks across the page like sky,
yet to find a name.

The river cuts through
the land, me — what’s forgotten
in that cold current.

Robert Motherwell
loved the thick black line: thrown, drawn—
coaxed out from hiding.

for Sylvia Plath

The finality,
the letter dropped in the box,
the line drawn and cut.

There’s a treasure here,
thought about and drawn by hand,
placed in sun to dry.

The path takes us to
the shoulders of the forest
where gentle vines grow.

What seems bleak to us,
the February forest,
of course, it is not.