Am

I am the endless moment of my poetic soul,
When all else has fallen away but me, me being me,
Whoever, whenever, wherever I may be, today, tomorrow.

This cloudless cerulean sky am I,
Its outrageously blazing sunrays,
Radiating off the silver surface of this ice-glazed lake.

Look for me, somewhere between the snow's last vestiges
And spring's saturated, burgeoning, just-greening earth
Drinking me into its vast, deep, eternal reservoirs.

And in June, look for me in the shore-lining cattails, as well,
Tiptop-high in the crowns of white and red pines,
Clinging to the mist lifting into a magnificence of sunrise,

Singing from the throats of chickadees, red-winged blackbirds,
Wailing from a lone loon floating in a moonlit shimmer,
Ringing from the bell of the village's Presbyterian church.

Look for me there and here, nowhere else, and you'll find me.
I am everywhere. All things surrounding me, I surround.
Wherever I am is everything I've ever been, everything I am.

Late-Afternoon Nap

There's nothing quite like catching an elusive snooze,
Grasping a fleet-footed catnap,
Grabbing a quarter of the normal forty winks,
Something far short of a ripsnorting Van Winkle doze,
To make a man on an escape from numbing urban routine
Surrender to the body's natural need to relax
And be sundered by the carefreedom a mini-slumber provides,

Which is precisely what I did, late this Friday afternoon,
Here, on my first full day back in away-from-it-all Wisconsin,
Where the lake is melting a month too early
And the few streets the village boasts are snowless,
Yet echoing with the fast-paced footfalls of my jogging shoes . . .
Nothing quite like chasing an hour's nap,
To awaken the soul to the balm of emancipation and calm.