CROSS SECTION

Worn thin at the base of the tree by deer or dogs,

Crusted coat of the loblolly,

Giant lizard skin in bright light,

Picked clean of larvae by the nuthatch and ladder-back woodpecker,

Cleaved into toe and hand holds for the brown squirrel’s steep climb,

Sloughed off no less than an outer skin as the year’s ring grows,

Brittle, leathered brown scales,

Like feathers, rising from ancient dinosaur bones.

Circumference builds, layer by  layer,

Trunk, branches, limbs, and roots circle wider,

Music’s disk played out in annual random notes

Beneath the corrugated grooves and ridges

Basic strings hold together, in a quantum dance,

Addition rules like a wordsmith’s grammar.

© cmheuer, 2013  

WHAT IS THERE ABOUT THE DISTANCE?

What is there about the distance

Between you and me

Some absolute definition in feet or miles

It is the same

Unless a glance askew

Can bridge the silence

And the minute hand’s

Slow movement across the end

Of one day and the beginning

Of the next

Can repeat the moment

Does not have to be sequential

Does not have to shift from one

Foot to another in a long-standing wait

And by repetition can make a

Line into a single point

Is closer to the universe’s hypothesized

Beginning, which neither you nor I

Can reverse the way a seed can be

Unearthed or the forgotten can

Be exhumed and re-lit

Eye to eye there is a gaze

Broken by the lids’ involuntary

And irregular, open and shut

Avowal to the interrupted

Stream of our images

In a ritual exchange, traded

Hold more than we could glean

By sifting through all

Recollection.

© cmheuer, 2013

THE PAINTING

Brushstrokes embed the fury and hurl the

Stones, fired in a volcano’s ancient kiln and lifted above

Younger rocks, to form a molten bed for the river’s flow

And the forest’s roots. 

Water rushes down the mountain slope, stumbles

Over the stone boulders and falls in a white froth

Churning earth and lichens into

Irregular brushes of color that sear the canvas 

Brown and black. 

Tall, fallen trunks uncover skylights

Within the green and tanned canopy;

Dark shadows crawl between the trees and

Float in the turbulent water that unearths and

Bathes the blue granite and slate, cooling the earth,

Where the river gathers in rocky crevices;

Draws stones and trees to its sides;

Tells epic stories of the mountain’s creation;

Smooths out the clock’s hands; unravels the surface present;

And flows into the past as invisibly as the

Thinnest crest of now.

© cmheuer, 2013

WINGLESS FLIGHT

Lumber, steel, concrete multiply

Consume square feet

Beneath the geese, gull, and other flocks that

Increase on small grass plots,

Migrate along the oldest routes,

Perch on the flat roof

Of a deserted retail store,

Obsolete among a grid

Of empty parking lots.

There is an observer, who visits,

Unseen among a flock of starlings

In a flight show, the yellow beak

Is seen, the spattered breast

And cropped tail repeated for

Each bird identifies its kind

Picks through the debris, scatters

The dust with their wings

Pass before the intruder in mass

A sudden fly by and hover

Surrounds the single face,

Shades the eyes, startled.

As a sudden noise might take

The breath away or weaken the legs;

Might stop the eye lids’

Carefully timed closure or turn

The head to align the ear

Or brace the foot

For the start of the flight

From the observed, the studied,

The single mind among many

Twists the plot to be unraveled

Stretches out the morning’s pause

Gives the wingless a moment’s

Flight among the migrants.

© cmheuer, 2013

BIRD ON THE WING

Cloudy days appear bereft of shadows,

Smudged castoffs that tell time,

Litter the forest floor, and

Leave patterns adrift.

Shade eclipses as much earth as

There are objects on it to capture sunlight

And block it from revealing another side.

All matter loses detail and dons silhouettes,

Larger and more abstract than the original,

They curl up and wrap around like a gray-black fur.

Repeating shadows seem like objects themselves,

Long translucent columns shed by the loblollies at dawn

Break apart the early light and stretch toward the west,

Like fingers spread out to touch the earth

To sense its round shape and carry a message

For each root, limb, branch, and needle

There must be signs of time for

The grip of the sun has a firm hold.

There is a sudden burst of shadow that

Trails across the moss, dead leaves and fallen pine needles,

And I know that it is a bird on the wing,

And I know that I saw a shadow of the past,

That was a shadow of the clouds.

 © cmheuer, 2013

FIRST LIGHT

Time changed and shifted the

first light back, exposing dark

morning’s wet film

and there were the steps across

the leaves broken from the limbs

and shattered along the path

hidden between the

red-tipped sugar maples.

© cmheuer, 2013

WAITING FOR A METEOR

Crushed pieces of stone barely displace insect sounds,

As gravel sheds each step toward the field--

In the dark, footprints are useless--and

Trees slide out of view on the ink-black side of the earth.

Enlarged eyes harvest what they can: 

A waning crescent moon, star specks, and

Memorized scenes of grass blades and weeds

Covering a hillock and leading down

To a small pond, no bigger than a pig’s wallow.

The wall of char-black trees encircles the mound,

Blots out low-horizon stars and creates a ragged edge

Around the hill’s center as eyes dissolve without glowing, 

One particle at a time, into the blinding night,

Numbing cold and senseless void focused above

Like a vignette from a Holga lens.

While the earth pulls at one’s flesh drowned in a dark flood

That leaves only star spatters to read on the ceiling and

Suspends the weight of a timepiece buckled around the wrist,

An unwound remnant no longer ticking--

The sounds of insects vibrate and cross the sky as a stone

Etches a pale line of light. 

© cmheuer, 2013