Juniper berries
  twinkling in sun-lit frost -
  vanishing so soon. 

Spellbound by October stars:
     night's crisp air
     changed by the skunk...passing through.

Cider-scented breeze,
rustling the scattered leaves,
    sneaks past my sweater.

   roiling clouds embrace
looming peaks of shrouded pines:
                               flares of light crackle.

Sun's heat, shadow's chill,
haunt the early morning trail
     through glowing pine-land.

As the sun descends
   hummingbirds flit to their roosts -
      dusk's sweet air lulls me.
(For Tom - he had an idea and asked me to help)

Why do beetles' songs
seem to amplify the heat?
    A pre-monsoon day.

Where King George the third
     walked with Joseph Banks
          a Green Woodpecker hunts ants.

rows of white crosses,
behind black iron fence,
recall the fall of 1916

A horned snail measures
       a life's years on granite stone:
"John Butler Chorley".

The Black Pine recalls
   the smell of pipe smoke...
      the sound of pen on paper.

fresh blackberry pie
while watching flowers in bloom
      frames a summer day

Cocoon of metal:
            green and red lights flash by,
       banking over black ocean.

Undulating flight:
       forest's
    painted
                clowns
retrieving last year's acorns.

Brown block boarding house,
  rocky pineland trail descends
  to the pale sidewalk.

a butterscotch breeze
        wends downslope through our stately pines,
     safe for now

From Mars Hill
   the town is capped by fire's smoke.
Less obvious below.

Grass, tinged greenish white
   sway in the old, rounded wash
like sunlit ripples.

Cluster of Gambel Oak:
  Here's where the trail's dirt
  changes from tan to red.

  Old sea bed juts out,
glaring white,
  among dark. green pines.

The red trail climbs on
       mottled in old pine needles,
              striped with tree shadows.

Cool, clean, blue tiles
edged with green stones -
    three generations of memories.

Tethered, the balloon
       sways over remembrances -
Mother and child.

   Crumbling obelisk
ringed by sandstone sentinels;
   a chain's remains.

Stately green yew:
  pale brown dirt and colored stones
  mark the headstone's domain.

False spring in February:
          the seed catalogs
                sing a siren song.

The lights of Charley's:
       green of Ponderosa pine
       and the red of Mars.

As art behind glass:
         Pine needle patterns
         reflect beneath cloudy ice.

Icy water in boot prints -
old ones, melting?
   Or is someone ahead?

frozen mud on the trail -
     edges of a paw print glisten
          in the sun

My city is prettier
  from a sunlit ridge;
    the only sound, the wind.