Around the Bend

Tilted twirling

Whizzing whirling

Whipping tripping

Careening cascading

Here we go

Around the steep end of the ellipse

Slingshot

Solstice

Hang on

Here we go...

Days longer now

Till we reach the other side

Hope to see you all there

And doing well on this ride

Peace to all this Solstice Season

Bandingo

Bandingo

Slower

Simpler

A quiet compromise

Less opulence

More substance

Simpler

There is a vast range

Of living conditions

Here on Earth

All are closely connected to the very planet itself

Though most never become aware of this

From the most basic hunter gatherers

To the tech world of space travel

Ergonomics

To economics

Vast wealth

To devastating poverty

So why live a simpler life?

Why Bandingo?

The spectrum of human existence

A bell curve

Of have and have not

History will show

That in the long term

We will all

Sooner or later

Be moving toward the middle

Slower

Simpler

Connected

Bandingo

Thanksgiving

Willows whispering

Rustling rushing

Wind racing ringing

The wind chimes singing

The song of November

Ending

Mosse Road

For years it was simply
The Road
Like most roads around here
There were no names
Folks navigated by neighbor
And common knowledge

As for this place
That was easy
If you knew where the old schoolhouse was
Or where Jack Geyer lived
You could find this place

Everyone knew Jack Geyer
And some folks
Including my own father
Had attended the little one room schoolhouse
On the corner

Up the hill
The last and only home on the road
Before it ceases to be maintained
In winter

The last utility pole on the line
Stands on my front lawn

Two and a half miles
And two thousand acres
Of both state and privately owned
Wilderness
Lay between here
And where the snowplow
Again dares to venture

Not towns only
Can disappear
When economics, politics
Clash with our existence

Ghost farms
Inhabit these hills
Ghost roads connect them
Casualties of prohibition
And the great depression

The farms the roads
The people
All but forgotten

Sometime in the early seventies
A man came and assigned a number
To this house
The numbers were pinned
To a big topographic map
Down at the fire station

A fire number
For the first time in over fifty years
This house had something like an address
1440 Roseboom Township

And so it remained
Until sometime in the early nineties
“911 emergency services” was implemented
This required everyone to have a street address
Which meant the roads
Needed to have names

A survey of town
County and state records
Revealed that some of the roads
Did indeed not have names
But also that many
Did

Some roads
Like the one across the hilltop
Escaped the attention
Of the new 911 order
They now remain nameless
And do not appear on any map

Mosse Road
Was our road known
Of old
A ghost name
So it remains
A reminder
We are not newcomers here

Names were found
For those roads in need
A new number found
To designate this place

On Mosse Road

11/11/11 – 11:11:11

Moment of silence
I can feel the silence
When I go outside today

It is oppressive
Surrounding me
Like a crowd of nothing
Pressing close like the cold air itself

The kind of silence that comes with snowflakes
And memories
Big ones

The tall trees sway
The green grass whitens; silently
Inevitably
Accumulation
A day of high contrasts
And of low ones
Snow in November can do that

I think of that day here in the silence
Back in 1918
What it meant to my Grandfathers
What it meant to the world
For a moment the sun shines out
High contrast

The armistice, World War One
Two generations ago, so far from me…

The sun fails
Snow falls
Harder then ever
Low contrast

Outside my window
Stand maple trees
That stood there on that day
Not so long ago
Now it seems

Instantly
I am connected

Road Less Traveled

Forsaken
Decommissioned by it’s own neglect
Going nowhere
Servicing none

This old road
Relic of a time past
Winds its way
Across the top of the hill

Finding gates
Through walls of stone
Now decrepit
Disassembled

Marking boundaries unseen
Unknown to all
But a secret past
Ghosts of pasture lay between

Tree roots crowd now
The rumor of plow
And of furrow
Hard wood in place
Of grain and silo

All now woods
Where the farmhouse once stood
Barn, stable and the rest
Here now hawks nest

The old road silently passes
Without judgment or complaint
Knowing full well, for the time
The farms made their stand
That the wind
And the rain were always in command

So now the old road steers
By my need for wood, kept clear
Having escaped mapmakers and historians
The memories of what once was here
Fading as am I

Into obscurity

The Leaves Are Falling

Rusted rustling brown and yellow
Russet ruby twisting curling parchment
Newsletters proclaiming seasonal procession
Front row tickets to summer’s ending

The leaves are falling
The geese calling
Summer stalling

Blue sky
Grey sky
Somber stillness
Silence

The leaves are falling
As I am recalling
Birch, Elm
Maple and Ash
Walnut, Cherry
Locust, Beach
Butternut, Elder, Oak
Tamarack, Apple, Ironwood, Dogwood
Willow

The leaves are falling
I listen to the soft sound
As I find my pillow

Sleep calling
Evening takes me
Winter awaits

Re-connected

Tumultuous travel
Uprooting, rending, redistributing
Trip after trip
Parting, leaving, arriving, surviving

I have landed
The ghosts of my past
Still with me
I unfurl my colors to the wind
Bandingo farm
The seeds sown
Taking root
Here is where I make my stand

Flotsam
Jetsam
The dust settles
And I reconnect
With the help of a satellite in space
Thousands of miles above
Transmitting, receiving

The world sings
And my voice joins in
Rejoicing in harmony
A part of it within

The world sings
My heart reaches out
Yearning to touch it
Striving to see it
Hear it
Know it

I won’t be afraid
I won’t shed a tear
I will stand by you
As you stand by me

Good Night Irene

Atmospheric recoil
Air and Water exchanging energy
Weather happens
When there is a lot of energy
It happens in a big way

The tropics conspire
Land and sea
Air and Water
She stirs and rears her clouds

Coriolis effect
The earth turns
It sends things spinning
Hurricane

They name her Irene
Awakening slowly
She gathers moisture from the tropic sea
Holding it aloft with ever increasing winds
She heads north

Beating the rain
I hunkered down
On my little farm
And waited for her

Sleeping fitfully



I awoke to her fury
Her winds, bending every bough
Her rain, insatiable
Seeking any weakness
Looking for a sign

It was then I noticed
That I was lucky to have awakened at all
For in the night
As I slept
She took a shot at me



Bark, leaves, branches
Looking in my window
A tall locust
Thrust from the stand
And aimed at my head



But she missed
Not only me
But the house as well
And the windfall of her intention
Will warm me next winter



I will think of her
As I sit by the fire
The devastating fury of her rains
Every bridge and water crossing
Challenged

I am thankful today
The spirit of the eagle
Still looks over me
As it looks over this place

Shaken; Not Stirred

I went for a little ride today
Without even leaving my house
Without, in fact, even leaving my chair
Seated, as I was, in my office in Schenectady

Moments before, hundreds of miles away
Enormous pressure caused a shift in the rock
Along a crack of, as yet, undetermined size
Deep in the ground…

The shifting rock shook the Earth
Like ripples in a pond
The vibrations spread the news
Some along the surface
Some traveling deep into the Earth
Then reflected from within.

They reached me at different times
And so I was at first riding up and down
As if on a sine wave of varying intensity
Like a roller coaster

After a second or two of stillness
I was riding in a twisting way
Both back and forth and up and down
At the same time

I did not at first understand
That it was an earthquake
Until my girlfriend asked
“Did you feel it?”

It struck me like a flash
I called my daughter in Virginia
All was fine
I was free to reflect.

I remember now
Learning about the waves
Vibrations traveling through the Earth
P waves
S waves
And more

And the ancient geological record
From this part of the world
Telling a tale that goes all the way back to the beginning
The mountains here once so mighty
As to make the Himalayas
Appear as children

There have been other “rings of fire”
Once upon a time
More than once, in fact
And this old plate of rock
Still has a jolt or two left in it

So no in all
I was not really surprised
Just caught off guard

The Earth moves
And I move with it

As it should be

As I like it