In Cambridge again,

The blissful presence of the lake

Now accessible through memory alone.

My surroundings now, even empty,

Are full of what they might contain

Implied by how they are designed for that containment.

Roads, sidewalks, buildings,

The trappings that make their roles possible,

Wires, signs, signals

And groups of people

Police, city officials, property owners

Designating and constraining use

And shaping meaning.

The lake’s limitless horizons

The mountains, boulders

And even the small rocks

Are revelatory of the forces

Beyond our control

That brought about them—and us.

But those forces have too limited a presence

In our lives here in the city.

On reflection one can sense

What underlies the urban artifact:

The waterways, the topography,

Insistent outcroppings of rock

Slopes impossible to inhabit,

But also its strategic location

In the larger landscape

And ultimately the kinds and qualities of lives

It affords and the roles it can play.

At best there could be a melding

Of nature and intent,

Where the city could inspire,

Beyond the necessary purposes it must fulfill,

A more profound way to build on

Nature’s forces, strength, and beauty

While enabling the gathering of people and lives

To reach even more satisfying

Levels of achievement

And ways of being.

The chill of fall
The bleak sunlight
Making a cold white carpet of the lake
With sparkling crystalline decoration.
Still the warmth of the sun
Creates the ambiguity of the day
Preventing a too simple reading
And inviting us
To experience the contradictions,
The contrasts and the combinations
Of differences in light, in temperature, in mood
That tap our imaginations
In ways a colder day cannot.
There is no doubt about the direction of change,
Toward cold,
Toward greater distance between self and circumstance.
Needed will be layers of clothing,
Restrictions on type and time of outdoor activity
Clearer separation of the internal and the external.
The present affords the luxury
Of easy movement
Back and forth
The special privilege of these days
At the edge of seasons.

Near sunset
An orange sun
With a faint ring of purple
Possible to look at directly
Its haze created by California’s fires
Now reflected
Here in Squam Lake.
No sunset beyond the orange disk
The sky without color.
How odd
To have our place redefined
By things remote,
By forces and events not here.
What then is our place
But momentary constructions
Some more durable than others
Where changes reveal
The nature and relationships of the different parts
The quality of light
Its color, its intensity
Its interaction with the water and the landscape.

Most boats heading for Holderness,
West,
Some extraordinarily loud
As if noise were what they were about,
Yet others, quiet, elegant
Purposeful, announcing only
Direction and intention.
The sky presiding
With shapes of varying power and texture
Still, almost.
The week’s end.
And now Saturday
Oddly not accentuating shifts of activity
Or place
Hovering in a space and time
Internally defined,
Trying to find purpose and meaning
When actions have no consequences
Other than what one imagines.
Isolation is my new friend
Hard to get to know
Not very talkative
Forcing memories upon me
Not helpful in making sense
Of the here and now,
Exaggerating the impact
Of contact with others
Calling out for worlds of my own making
Worlds however unrealistic
To satisfy my yearnings for coherence
For purpose
For the meaning of being.

We are in an episode
In which we have no code
For its full extent
Or its every possible mode.

The Coronavirus plays out
Our President flays out
The economy crumbles
And Republicans flout

Their ignorance and arrogance
In a fake and vile dance
Displaying rank hypocrisy
While we all look askance.

For there to be an end in sight
We must cast new light
Of warmth and empathy
To set things right

Embodying a different way
Of thinking that can allay
Fear and resentment
Of others and what they say.

And even beyond these urgent needs
We must sew the seeds
Of a new narrative
In which our future reads

As a time in which race
Can no longer be the base
For prejudice and bigotry
But instead be how the case

Is made for a democratic thrust,
Inclusive, and which we trust
Will reconstruct our nation
In ways we must.

Gracefully leaning toward the sky
The daisies lift their precious flowers
With disks of greenish yellow
And their graceful white pettles
Each seeming to have its own agenda.
Below each flowerhead is the added complexity
Of the bracts — hairy leaf like structures
That give strength to the whole
And afford the fragility of the blossoms.
Not always so well struck in other things,
This balance exudes energy
From the dimensions of the contrast,
Ironically heightened by the artificially shortened life
In a vase.

The gentle breeze
The murmuring of the pines
The soft ripple of the waves
The placid sky.
After the robust wind
Had drawn the eye
To its widespread white-capped display
And the ear to the insistent rhythm
Of the breaking waves
Interrupted by crashes
Against the shore.

How nature shapes
Our character and outlook!
From moments of calm and contemplation
To vigorous engagement.
From moments of openness
With relative safety
To those of vulnerability
And watchfulness.
From thoughts that range from
Risk taking and challenge
To reflection and reconsideration.

The adventures of our own minds
Intersect with nature’s conditions in ways
That may not be mutually reinforcing.
Recognizing and taking advantage
Of the creative dissonance
Between the conditions
Of mind and nature.
Can be a source of great strength
Both in composition and in communication.

Just a day at the lake.

Stopping by Robert Frost

My family whom I thought I knew
It seems to me to be askew.
They may not notice my distress
Though signs of it reveal how true

The underlying feelings are
That cause me pain and only mar
My making sense of what divides
Despite the beauty near and far.

I try to give my thoughts some play
To see if any will allay
Those things that stubbornly resist
An open and inviting way

To probe the depth of family trust
To build again the bonds I must.
There is a distance I must go
There is a distance I must go.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.

That hidden realm of mind,
So difficult to find
Because of thoughts cut short
Plans not achieved,
Blocked.

But that realm reveals itself with subtle radiance
Radiance, though, that shrouds the view
Of all that is the source of its strength.
What are the means to to see through that layer
To glimpse the inner workings
Enough to forge linkages
With at least some of its elements?

Dreams, desires, delusions,
Perhaps indulge one of these
To look for resonances, rhymes
That sound from within.

Regrets small and large
Have found safe harbor
Where they crowd out vessels
That contain more precious cargo
And prevent them from reaching port
Where they could unload
To provide the basis for how to inhabit
This new realm.
There would seem only two ways to get through: by force or by persuasion.
To destroy or displace those that are in the way, or
To co-opt enough of them to permit access.
There may be a third way, however:
By shining on each one of the regrets
The light of reason and understanding
So bright that it disappears.
Though the vessels with more precious cargo are not armed in the conventional sense,
They are armed with reason and understanding.
Is the light they generate enough to eliminate
The clutter of regrets and misunderstandings
Floating between them and
The realm of possibility?