I must lay you down today,
     this crystal Vermont day
with brisk winds, billowy clouds,
          and cool fall-like temperatures.
The burden of your painful legs will cease.
You will be forever young
and run wind-fast again with the pack.
- from My Redford

I soon forget the object of my quest
as nature does her thing
with all I see.
This peaceful setting
puts the mind to rest
and gives the soul
a reason just to be.
- from The Quest

Outside my window,
crazed with indiscriminate patterns of ice,
     a red squirrel sits on silent haunches
in prayerful fashion -
a cloistered monk sworn to silence.
His ashen tummy is exposed like the white belly
     of snow which surrounds him
     as he contemplates a sunflower seed
          clenched tightly in his hands.
- from Cycles

At dawn,
my young bay Morgan, Willoughby Skipper,
is poised like a regal statue
on the crest of a knoll -
head held high,
neck curved like the arc of a quarter-moon,
winter coat of thickened hair
buffering the chill of daybreak -
a chiseled silhouette
to a proud breed.
- from Willoughby Skipper

Stay yet another day,
perhaps we'll saddle up
and take just one more ride
across the muted meadow.
Perchance I'll get your harness
and hitch you to the sleigh -
we'll traverse along a gentle lane
with bells pealing once more
and dream of times
when we were one and young.

Your mane of flaxen hair still shines
when the early morning sun
hits it right -
So stay, yet one more day,
old horse, old friend.
- from Old Friend

When one has served a long time alone,
one refrains from squatting for the low volley
he can no longer reach,
so one's partner can brush aside the fuzzy sphere
with more aplomb.
- from Ode to a First Serve Going In

At daybreak
I walk upon a newly laid blanket of white crystals,
concealing all beneath like a quilt of down.
The winter wind wrestles nervously in the wood
as if to say I am not alone.
I stay afloat on bear-paw snowshoes,
fashioned from curved white ash
and laced with rawhide.
I traipse along a trail
that was in summer more familiar.
- from Winter Walk

Beneath a bed of leaves,
    decaying layer on layer,
    lie remnants of the past -
        A maze of earthen smells forgotten,
        and friends with whom our paths have split,
    and roads we took and didn't take -
All decaying layer on layer,
beneath a bed of leaves.

Beneath a bed of leaves,
    Memories slip away to dust
        of comrades who came and went,
        of creatures of the wild,
        of sights and sounds of natural things -
    All sought to give us balance,
now lying fast asleep
beneath a bed of leaves.
- from A Bed of Leaves