Long Arboretum Poems

gardens are where we are:

  from "Eden" to "Gilgamesh", "Babylon" to "Gethsemane"
  from mountain to coast, town to country
  from wetlands to desert oasis, under the sea to the edge of ice
...

Read More

Like an arboretum, my smile and laughter fills empty space,
tall stand the trees all huddled together like girlfriends on a chilly night ready to share their secrets.
We lay bare our souls, sat on the bench,...

Read More

BEYOND DESCRIPTION

If you took all the words in all the dictionaries.
The words of all the books in all the world’s libraries,
You’d still not have enough to tell of all God’s love
Or describe the glorious mansions...

Read More

Memorial service ~10:00 A.M. October 21st, 2020...
at Cherry Hill, New Jersey Unitarian Fellowship

Boyce Brandon Harris cremains
(approximately one fourth entire contents)
offered, interred, and eulogized
within ‘Tristan’s Pollinator Garden,'
which constitutes minute arboretum
bore witness to immediate family of said...

Read More

The other day I heard two lovers having a quarrel. They were sitting on a park bench at the arboretum near my home. I though to myself, "I wonder what the big fuss is all...

Read More

Land of Graves

A land of graves makes for quiet neighbors.  
He who blessed or cursed extant thereupon remains 
Shall suffer little disturbance at the will of his resting countrymen.  
The deep silence of...

Read More

We piled into the car
Caleb and Mom in front, me in the back
We weren't planning to go far
A nearby arboretum off the beaten track.

We went north, there were many cars each way
Saw a motorcycle downed,...

Read More

When I was young I didn’t think 
In terms of accomplishment 
I guess my ego wasn’t developed enough
To have the perspective and appreciation
To consider it all worthwhile, but
I also think those childhood achievements 
Pleased my...

Read More

("Zero Point of Creation", 2018, original encaustic)

In Praise of Mindlessness

I’ve sought and found mindlessness in a variety of ways
From dancing to climbing, meditating and painting,
but in retirement I find it easiest mowing the arboretum.

As I...

Read More

Airy Wells and Emmett Street were working class kids,
Just shy of a high school diploma.
Airy’s mom had a habit of drinking too much.
Emmett’s father was fighting lymphoma.

Airy and Emmett had jobs after school,
And mostly just...

Read More

I bowed before the Lord.
Like a little brook, His Spirit flowed.
As I went lower, the Bestower
Poured more into my soul.
A whole refreshing, a mighty blessing
Like a fragrant arboretum flowed.
As praise I raised, heaven heaved
And more...

Read More

Within a lush verdant meadow, meanders a lazy river
Where wildflowers bloom beneath the warm breath of the sun
They sway upon a gypsy wind on this early morning in June

Stems of purple heather rise above the...

Read More

Three women friends, riding in a golf cart, an arboretum journey.
The sky was overcast, the mood jubilant, we were ready for fun.
A reverence and sacred silence met us as we entered the park.
There were ten...

Read More

Did you see the rose bushes in the arboretum this afternoon? Did you see all the powerful colors lighting up the garden? How about the butterflies dancing upon the petals of the roses? They dipped...

Read More

When the last wild tree has fallen,
Concrete covered last bare earth,
When we've finally completed
Rape of the Mother Earth,
When the last bird has flown freely,
The last wild animal safely caged,
Will we be proud of the warfare
Against...

Read More

The arboretum is quiet today.
It is early,
yet too late
to spot a somnambulant space alien
emerging from the thorny bushes.

Do you believe?
I have seen the odd-looking sparrows,
with their razor-sharp teeth,
have fearfully
fed them the toenails of the toothless.

I...

Read More

A COPPER PENNY


The significance of a copper penny…
It’s part of our heritage
Being raised in the copper mining area
Of Ruth, Nevada
Fathers and brothers worked for
The Kennecott Copper Mining Corporation
Both abhorred and sacrificed for
It was a job
The...

Read More

City of Trees 

1
Johannesburg, home to ten million trees,
It’s the world’s largest urban arboretum.
Streets in summer lie beneath green canopies.

2
From sidewalks their branches meet with ease
And soon, very soon, each street’s a shady sanctum.
Johannesburg, home...

Read More

Go to the wall and read the names
Go to the wall and stand
Go to the wall and shed a tear
For those that saved our land.

Stand by the wall and read the dates
Stand by the wall...

Read More

Thomas Higgins was busy doctor
And spent his evenings with the rector
Who managed a nearby seminary;
He was a man loveably down-to-earth and ordinary.

He spent the hours between four and six
In the nearby arboretum studying twings
And the...

Read More

A New Sun
Shining through leaves...
a golden canopy of Light...

and the calling-after voice
of an insistent mother, rises, instructs,
and dies away

and all of it:  the breeze, the whispers, the passing occasional car, the children's laughter

floods into...

Read More

I’ve written about it before
Because it’s just so interesting
The way the mind works doing mindless chores
As I zigzag in and out of trees mowing the arboretum.

Sometimes there’s a pattern I follow.
But usually, it’s a sporadic...

Read More

Wings in puddles.
There must have been a leak,
and in the sky nothing fly’s 
but a crippled gale,
it limps now, yet howls still
from the far side of lost town.

Wind-drones moan in bare trees
sky wreckage litters.
Dead Purple...

Read More

The railroad trestle stood out
Like a burnt tree
In the center of an arboretum
Just down the road
Past the old Wenapecka tunnel

Late at night
At almost any given time
The sound of heavy wheels
On trains that appeared 
To have...

Read More

The arboretum looks as it did then
With silver maples dancing in the breeze
Wildflowers bloom within the narrow glen
Remember how we kissed beneath the trees?

One special oak displays the heart you carved
With our initials set within...

Read More