Publication of his novel, Ashram: Adventures on a Yoga Farm (an ebook from
PulpBits.com), has Jnana’s chakras spinning. He has also finally seen moose
tracks in the snow. They were beside a busy deer path alongside the Lamprey
River halfway on his commute to the newspaper office. He finds his world is full of
unseen creatures large and small.








ELONGATED AND WINGLESS



A walkingstick (family Phasmatidae)

three or four inches long

twig-green-and-brown

crosses my balding head

at bedtime in Manchester.



("only a few species occur in the North")



Makes me wonder how it ever got

in this apartment, anyway.

Just where does it think it’s going

in its slender insect nature

more angular than hair?







HYSTERICAL WIND



In one day everything changes

and it’s apparent

summer won’t be returning.



How appropriate, when the first anniversary

of September disaster

comes a day after swimming in Maine ocean.



Great wind brings clouds and chill.

Mottled sullen clouds

knock trees over, rattle the house,

litter highways,

sever power to traffic lights in Epping.



We cower

in crimped motion.





COUNT THE SECONDS



How brief

the awakening



sparkling fuse

races



misconstruing

youth for death.



This, as the love

I long desired.



Even though she dances

with mortality.



Catch me now

in some explosion.





LATE AGAIN



A week from Palm Sunday

the year Easter came late,

snow still covered

the meetinghouse yard.



In the countryside,

picket rows of tawny stubble

inched up in clouded fields

turning muddy.



The transcendent autobiography

would detail that pivotal day

I planted pine seedlings

in strip-mined clay -



how gradually I came to value

these Old Ways.



WHEN THE VOLCANO SHOWS

SIGNS OF ERUPTING



Skin’s never black or white. Even

at midnight some blue or pink glows

as if bringing a slight breath to life



or to betray an emotion.

Doors painted coal black

appear spent or burned, even vacuous



unlike slate gray

with its blue rock

New England.



When she said "debt free"

I heard "get free"

but really there’s no difference.

Jnana Hodson