The characteristics of rustic charm:
Will an Adirondack chair do?
Temperature: near eighty
Companions: 
Summer Snowflake Viburnum, hands to the side, fingers stretched,
a don't-touch-me from the nervous bride. 
Flag iris, white also,  
and a couple blue, as if bidding for a role in the wedding.  
Sadly missing: the show-off yellow,
kidnapped, perhaps, by the steadily advancing shadow of 
Grandfather Oak.
Spreading Korean lilac, showing the Japanese maple and 
the two-toned fashion-plate Wiegelia
who's boss in this corner of things.  
Music? Piano melt.
Good government? Hmmm, I've heard the phrase
Sports? No. The multi-millionaires are squabbling. 
 
You can't have everything.
Enjoy the silence
while it lasts.
                        

A house on a hill in eighty-four
We moved to town to live some more.
 
The English lady across the street,
as fine and quiet a soul as one could meet.
The nosey-helpful neighbor in the rental next door,
who gave you things 
            (you didn't need).
The flower border, the schoolyard swings.
 
Walking distance to the shore,
harbor beauty, all the history you needed
     and much more.
The clichéd icons in Pilgrim hats,
street games, youth sports and baseball bats
A bakery, a library down the street,
the hardware store whose ancient lore faded soon 
    into retreat. 
 
The kids grew up on Watson's Hill 
Memory sees the sunken 
side yard still.
A parable of neighbors,
     artists, babies, kids, 
small-town egos, occasional heavies 
     with unchecked ids. 
 
The day the grands brought to our daughter's school 
hundreds of slides from a China tour, epic cool, 
ending — world-watching! — with student protests in the Square. 
We thought we saw the 'New Age' starting there. 
 
But age gives on to still more ages 
The old town renews, and newly stages
     its story of a place to be. 
We shared its love,
it set us free. 
 
06.05.20
                        

I give my time to the universe,
from whom of course it came
and who, chief among all providers, 
consistently has time for me
 
I give my time to the breeze
that blows yellow green
through the ease of the leaves
like a child's candy color 
 
I give time to the quiver 
in the trees, to the wave  
and the flutter, to father sky,
and his son, the river.
 
I give time to the great voices, 
who murmur companionably 
         to the last lights of day.
To the tints that lie upon the waters,
disporting freely in the bay.
 
I give time to the pictures,
all those memory-prints.
They give it back to me.