east
the whole moon
burns behind jamestown
seven wings of geese
light the thin ice
west
the asian sun
bloody on the interstate
spring flowers
break on the gray prairie
exit
fingerprints
on the rearview mirror
feral shadows
transposed near fargo
An old woodcut of the London Bridge
and a colored lithograph of a barley field.
There are no other pictures on Ward D.
The London Bridge lifts sooty towers above the river.
But it's the barley field I see.
A golden ocean of barley.
It's not like the other grain-fields.
Maybe it's those inward-looking eyes
gone into it so it becomes heaven?
rain on the lake
room at the lodge
alone in a room
in the lazy light
loons on the lake
geese in the air
moose in the woods
aware awake
a cry dislodged
from the musty woods
the gamy musk
of the one aroused
the roaming moose
the rooms lit up
the woods awake
in the loony light
the moon dislodged
the lake aflame
the Muse amazed
amused aroused
I acknowledge my status as a stranger:
Inappropriate clothes, odd habits
Out of sync with wasp and wren.
I admit I don’t know how
To sit still or move without purpose.
I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.
John-O was given a key to the apartment. The deal
was this: if Phil died suddenly, and John-O heard,
he would rush on over, enter the apartment, leave
unseen with Phil’ s brown suitcase, and secretly pitch it
into the mounded deeps of the city dump.
Simply, there were things that Phil didn’ t want
to hurt his family with. Do you have yours?
All these years I overlooked them in the
racket of the rest, this
symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding
on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air —
tiny acid-factories dissolving
salt from living rocks and
eating them.
Here they are, blooming!
Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it:
rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and
cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly
with shooting-stars and lupine at the base.
We were dreaming on an occupied island at the farthest edge
of a trembling nation when it went down.
Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched
the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry
by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed
by a fire dragon, by oil and fear.
Eaten whole.
It was coming.
We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their
long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen.
As it would for a prow, the basin parts with your foot.
Never a marsh, of heron blue
but the single red feather
from the wing of some black bird, somewhere
a planked path winds above water,
the line of sky above this aching space.
Movement against the surface
is the page that accepts no ink.
A line running even
over the alternating depths, organisms, algae,
a rotting leaf.
THERE ARE HILLS LIKE SHARKFINS
and clods of mud.
The mind drifts through
in the shape of a museum,
in the guise of a museum
dreaming dead friends:
Jim, Tom, Emmet, Bill.
— Like billboards their huge faces droop
and stretch on the walls,
on the walls of the cliffs out there,
where trees with white trunks
makes plumes on rock ridges.
My mind is fingers holding a pen.
