In the northwest corner of Dakota, I saw a room
someone had left, a plush sofa returning its button-
eyed stare to the glance she gave it over her shoulder,
the dog, too, turning. In the next room, the mattress,
with mattress stories one after another tumbling
out of each spring, the window she opened first thing,
its vista of mile after mile, and the windmill hauling
its load.
I saw that, and nothing alive —
He was touched or he touched or
she did and was, or they were
and would. Or the room could, its
three doors, two windows or
the house on a slant touching,
touched by the drift down street, cars
pressing quick or slowing. All along
the town touched a river, the river
So the tide forgets, as morning
Grows too far delivered, as the bowls
Of rock and wood run dry.
What is left seems pearled and lit,
As those cases
Of the museum stood lit
With milk jade, rows of opaque vases
Streaked with orange and yellow smoke.
You found a lavender boat, a single
Figure poling upstream, baskets
It is a place whither I’ ve often gone
For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool,
A beautiful recess in neighboring woods.
Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall,
Arch it o’ erhead and column it around,
Framing a covert, natural and wild,
Domelike and dim; though nowhere so enclosed
But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot
Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here
A transient and unfrequent visitor;
Yet if the day be calm, not often then,
Whilst the high pines in one another’ s arms
A hole torn in the fabric of the world,
the web, the whole infernal weave
through which live-giving rain is falling
but mixing with the tears and with the blood.
Dead body-snatchers enter, the mega-corpses,
much in the news these days, enter and grind
bones, flesh and sinews down to dry tree bark,
mixing with tree bark, crawling with the demonic
beetles. They’ ll tell it later: “No one expected this”:
not one — patient, doctors, practitioners
of every stripe, no one except the one whose daily
The reservoir churned and cloud-deformed
The far line of hills, fused, bunched color
bitter wind against this hunch
my folded bones
I can see the rust earth beneath trees, the rough mats
gathering weight in semi-darkness, dim
nesting bases of trees
Graft of dark cloud upon lighter one behind, building up
of something, a thickening, deposit of cold air, dark web
of insistence, built up in me
rings diminish, duck reflects flight then threads off
Long branch of land, rusted oaks smoldering
fawn shore, grasses bare scripts of green
black fingerbones of the willows, splayed
rubric fringe of the reeds at the edge of water
The reflection is its own blurred dream
The blended edges, furred thing
tawny path of stalks brushed into gray slope behind
Bright yellow mostly gone now, the dominance
The shelter of it carved, caved
Across the river, the park and the little Ferris wheel
closed down
The great oaks emptying, russet, gusseted
the hovering slant light leaking from the outer edge
of cloud bed
leads and shawls pulled forth
Thy synchrony of the lost elements recovered
the shivering water surfaces, planar unmeldings, remeldings,
riverine alchemies, unlocketed selves
now the reemergence, the sun pouring global gold
stripped batting of cloud
glimpsed ligaments
dusk coming up under
lithographic, nib-hatchings
instruments click
the fine-sprung locust
replicate dinge along hill-lines
tailings of umber, the rust smudge
There is still that hemmed ocean of oaks
the various reds, the somehow
silver cast over the brown-gold
lonely as four cherries on a tree
at night, new moon, wet roads
a moth or a snowflake
whipping past glass
lonely as the red noses of four clowns
thrust up through snow
their shine four whitened panes
drawn from imagined memory
lonely as no other lives
touching to recorded water
all objects stare
their memories aware
lonely as pain
recoiling from itself
imagining the cherries
and roses reaching out
