The days of the praying mantis are over,
and the night of the spring peeper is silent
but for toadstools growing in the soggy-bottomed earth...

crickets have taken their solos home
and the sky is bereft of bird-lust and bird-song,
damsel dragons with black-lace wings are lucid moments
of summer passed in flowers' parades when
spring turned the corner of a young blue-bottled sun,
thick as heat, asphalt-melted like pearls of dew in the pasture grass
where grasshoppers had their say and bees buzzed drunk and yellow-laden
with the joy of clover honey;

the nights are cool and autumn's silence carries through pines
whispering their old she-bear secrets;
leaves fall, as if the shivering starts with one and then
another, fat mahogany-hued squirrels argue about the state of
nuts in Ohio, all is well and the well is mirror-lake, red, gold, copper and pumpkin orange.
Dark arrowheads of clouds crowd the sky hanging low and cover a spirited-earth.

Freedom is a ride we take sometimes. It takes us through
passages of time; we meet the Buddha on the road and smile
our Buddha smiles. Cherub angels shoot us with swift arrows of love and Pegasus
dreams he can fly.